part 1

part 2

part 3

The only way to stop global warming is for rich nations to pay for the damage they’ve done – or face the consequences

NAOMI KLEIN

One last chance to save the world — for months, that’s how the United Nations summit on climate change in Copenhagen, which starts in early December, was being hyped. Officials from 192 countries were finally going to make a deal to keep global temperatures below catastrophic levels. The summit called for “that old comic-book sensibility of uniting in the face of a common danger threatening the Earth,” said Todd Stern, President Obama’s chief envoy on climate issues. “It’s not a meteor or a space invader, but the damage to our planet, to our community, to our children and their children will be just as great.”

That was back in March. Since then, the endless battle over health care reform has robbed much of the president’s momentum on climate change. With Copenhagen now likely to begin before Congress has passed even a weak-ass climate bill co-authored by the coal lobby, U.S. politicians have dropped the superhero metaphors and are scrambling to lower expectations for achieving a serious deal at the climate summit. It’s just one meeting, says U.S. Energy Secretary Steven Chu, not “the be-all and end-all.”

As faith in government action dwindles, however, climate activists are treating Copenhagen as an opportunity of a different kind. On track to be the largest environmental gathering in history, the summit represents a chance to seize the political terrain back from business-friendly half-measures, such as carbon offsets and emissions trading, and introduce some effective, common-sense proposals — ideas that have less to do with creating complex new markets for pollution and more to do with keeping coal and oil in the ground.

Among the smartest and most promising — not to mention controversial — proposals is “climate debt,” the idea that rich countries should pay reparations to poor countries for the climate crisis. In the world of climate-change activism, this marks a dramatic shift in both tone and content. American environmentalism tends to treat global warming as a force that transcends difference: We all share this fragile blue planet, so we all need to work together to save it. But the coalition of Latin American and African governments making the case for climate debt actually stresses difference, zeroing in on the cruel contrast between those who caused the climate crisis (the developed world) and those who are suffering its worst effects (the developing world). Justin Lin, chief economist at the World Bank, puts the equation bluntly: “About 75 to 80 percent” of the damages caused by global warming “will be suffered by developing countries, although they only contribute about one-third of greenhouse gases.”

Climate debt is about who will pick up the bill. The grass-roots movement behind the proposal argues that all the costs associated with adapting to a more hostile ecology — everything from building stronger sea walls to switching to cleaner, more expensive technologies — are the responsibility of the countries that created the crisis. “What we need is not something we should be begging for but something that is owed to us, because we are dealing with a crisis not of our making,” says Lidy Nacpil, one of the coordinators of Jubilee South, an international organization that has staged demonstrations to promote climate reparations. “Climate debt is not a matter of charity.”

Sharon Looremeta, an advocate for Maasai tribespeople in Kenya who have lost at least 5 million cattle to drought in recent years, puts it in even sharper terms. “The Maasai community does not drive 4×4s or fly off on holidays in airplanes,” she says. “We have not caused climate change, yet we are the ones suffering. This is an injustice and should be stopped right now.”

The case for climate debt begins like most discussions of climate change: with the science. Before the Industrial Revolution, the density of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere — the key cause of global warming — was about 280 parts per million. Today, it has reached 387 ppm — far above safe limits — and it’s still rising. Developed countries, which represent less than 20 percent of the world’s population, have emitted almost 75 percent of all greenhouse-gas pollution that is now destabilizing the climate. (The U.S. alone, which comprises barely five percent of the global population, contributes 25 percent of all carbon emissions.) And while developing countries like China and India have also begun to spew large amounts of carbon dioxide, the reasoning goes, they are not equally responsible for the cost of the cleanup, because they have contributed only a small fraction of the 200 years of cumulative pollution that has caused the crisis.

In Latin America, left-wing economists have long argued that Western powers owe a vaguely defined “ecological debt” to the continent for centuries of colonial land-grabs and resource extraction. But the emerging argument for climate debt is far more concrete, thanks to a relatively new body of research putting precise figures on who emitted what and when. “What is exciting,” says Antonio Hill, senior climate adviser at Oxfam, “is you can really put numbers on it. We can measure it in tons of CO₂ and come up with a cost.”

Equally important, the idea is supported by the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change — ratified by 192 countries, including the United States. The framework not only asserts that “the largest share of historical and current global emissions of greenhouse gases has originated in developed countries,” it clearly states that actions taken to fix the problem should be made “on the basis of equity and in accordance with their common but differentiated responsibilities.”

The reparations movement has brought together a diverse coalition of big international organizations, from Friends of the Earth to the World Council of Churches, that have joined up with climate scientists and political economists, many of them linked to the influential Third World Network, which has been leading the call. Until recently, however, there was no government pushing for climate debt to be included in the Copenhagen agreement. That changed in June, when Angelica Navarro, the chief climate negotiator for Bolivia, took the podium at a U.N. climate negotiation in Bonn, Germany. Only 36 and dressed casually in a black sweater, Navarro looked more like the hippies outside than the bureaucrats and civil servants inside the session. Mixing the latest emissions science with accounts of how melting glaciers were threatening the water supply in two major Bolivian cities, Navarro made the case for why developing countries are owed massive compensation for the climate crisis.

“Millions of people — in small islands, least-developed countries, landlocked countries as well as vulnerable communities in Brazil, India and China, and all around the world — are suffering from the effects of a problem to which they did not contribute,” Navarro told the packed room. In addition to facing an increasingly hostile climate, she added, countries like Bolivia cannot fuel economic growth with cheap and dirty energy, as the rich countries did, since that would only add to the climate crisis — yet they cannot afford the heavy upfront costs of switching to renewable energies like wind and solar.

The solution, Navarro argued, is three-fold. Rich countries need to pay the costs associated with adapting to a changing climate, make deep cuts to their own emission levels “to make atmospheric space available” for the developing world, and pay Third World countries to leapfrog over fossil fuels and go straight to cleaner alternatives. “We cannot and will not give up our rightful claim to a fair share of atmospheric space on the promise that, at some future stage, technology will be provided to us,” she said.

The speech galvanized activists across the world. In recent months, the governments of Sri Lanka, Venezuela, Paraguay and Malaysia have endorsed the concept of climate debt. More than 240 environmental and development organizations have signed a statement calling for wealthy nations to pay their climate debt, and 49 of the world’s least-developed countries will take the demand to Copenhagen as a negotiating bloc.

“If we are to curb emissions in the next decade, we need a massive mobilization larger than any in history,” Navarro declared at the end of her talk. “We need a Marshall Plan for the Earth. This plan must mobilize financing and technology transfer on scales never seen before. It must get technology onto the ground in every country to ensure we reduce emissions while raising people’s quality of life. We have only a decade.”

A very expensive decade. The World Bank puts the cost that developing countries face from climate change — everything from crops destroyed by drought and floods to malaria spread by mosquito-infested waters — as high as $100 billion a year. And shifting to renewable energy, according to a team of United Nations researchers, will raise the cost far more: to as much as $600 billion a year over the next decade.

Unlike the recent bank bailouts, however, which simply transferred public wealth to the world’s richest financial institutions, the money spent on climate debt would fuel a global environmental transformation essential to saving the entire planet. The most exciting example of what could be accomplished is the ongoing effort to protect Ecuador’s Yasuní National Park. This extraordinary swath of Amazonian rainforest, which is home to several indigenous tribes and a surreal number of rare and exotic animals, contains nearly as many species of trees in 2.5 acres as exist in all of North America. The catch is that underneath that riot of life sits an estimated 850 million barrels of crude oil, worth about $7 billion. Burning that oil — and logging the rainforest to get it — would add another 547 million tons of carbon dioxide to the atmosphere.

Two years ago, Ecuador’s center-left president, Rafael Correa, said something very rare for the leader of an oil-exporting nation: He wanted to leave the oil in the ground. But, he argued, wealthy countries should pay Ecuador — where half the population lives in poverty — not to release that carbon into the atmosphere, as “compensation for the damages caused by the out-of-proportion amount of historical and current emissions of greenhouse gases.” He didn’t ask for the entire amount; just half. And he committed to spending much of the money to move Ecuador to alternative energy sources like solar and geothermal.

Largely because of the beauty of the Yasuní, the plan has generated widespread international support. Germany has already offered $70 million a year for 13 years, and several other European governments have expressed interest in participating. If Yasuní is saved, it will demonstrate that climate debt isn’t just a disguised ploy for more aid — it’s a far more credible solution to the climate crisis than the ones we have now. “This initiative needs to succeed,” says Atossa Soltani, executive director of Amazon Watch. “I think we can set a model for other countries.”

Activists point to a huge range of other green initiatives that would become possible if wealthy countries paid their climate debts. In India, mini power plants that run on biomass and solar power could bring low-carbon electricity to many of the 400 million Indians currently living without a light bulb. In cities from Cairo to Manila, financial support could be given to the armies of impoverished “trash pickers” who save as much as 80 percent of municipal waste in some areas from winding up in garbage dumps and trash incinerators that release planet-warming pollution. And on a much larger scale, coal-fired power plants across the developing world could be converted into more efficient facilities using existing technology, cutting their emissions by more than a third.

But to ensure that climate reparations are real, advocates insist, they must be independent of the current system of international aid. Climate money cannot simply be diverted from existing aid programs, such as primary education or HIV prevention. What’s more, the funds must be provided as grants, not loans, since the last thing developing countries need is more debt. Furthermore, the money should not be administered by the usual suspects like the World Bank and USAID, which too often push pet projects based on Western agendas, but must be controlled by the United Nations climate convention, where developing countries would have a direct say in how the money is spent.

Without such guarantees, reparations will be meaningless — and without reparations, the climate talks in Copenhagen will likely collapse. As it stands, the U.S. and other Western nations are engaged in a lose-lose game of chicken with developing nations like India and China: We refuse to lower our emissions unless they cut theirs and submit to international monitoring, and they refuse to budge unless wealthy nations cut first and cough up serious funding to help them adapt to climate change and switch to clean energy. “No money, no deal,” is how one of South Africa’s top environmental officials put it. “If need be,” says Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, speaking on behalf of the African Union, “we are prepared to walk out.”

In the past, President Obama has recognized the principle on which climate debt rests. “Yes, the developed nations that caused much of the damage to our climate over the last century still have a responsibility to lead,” he acknowledged in his September speech at the United Nations. “We have a responsibility to provide the financial and technical assistance needed to help these [developing] nations adapt to the impacts of climate change and pursue low-carbon development.”

Yet as Copenhagen draws near, the U.S. negotiating position appears to be to pretend that 200 years of over-emissions never happened. Todd Stern, the chief U.S. climate negotiator, has scoffed at a Chinese and African proposal that developed countries pay as much as $400 billion a year in climate financing as “wildly unrealistic” and “untethered to reality.” Yet he put no alternative number on the table — unlike the European Union, which has offered to kick in up to $22 billion. U.S. negotiators have even suggested that countries could fund climate debt by holding periodic “pledge parties,” making it clear that they see covering the costs of climate change as a matter of whimsy, not duty.

But shunning the high price of climate change carries a cost of its own. U.S. military and intelligence agencies now consider global warming a leading threat to national security. As sea levels rise and droughts spread, competition for food and water will only increase in many of the world’s poorest nations. These regions will become “breeding grounds for instability, for insurgencies, for warlords,” according to a 2007 study for the Center for Naval Analyses led by Gen. Anthony Zinni, the former Centcom commander. To keep out millions of climate refugees fleeing hunger and conflict, a report commissioned by the Pentagon in 2003 predicted that the U.S. and other rich nations would likely decide to “build defensive fortresses around their countries.”

Setting aside the morality of building high-tech fortresses to protect ourselves from a crisis we inflicted on the world, those enclaves and resource wars won’t come cheap. And unless we pay our climate debt, and quickly, we may well find ourselves living in a world of climate rage. “Privately, we already hear the simmering resentment of diplomats whose countries bear the costs of our emissions,” Sen. John Kerry observed recently. “I can tell you from my own experience: It is real, and it is prevalent. It’s not hard to see how this could crystallize into a virulent, dangerous, public anti-Americanism. That’s a threat too. Remember: The very places least responsible for climate change — and least equipped to deal with its impacts — will be among the very worst affected.”

That, in a nutshell, is the argument for climate debt. The developing world has always had plenty of reasons to be pissed off with their northern neighbors, with our tendency to overthrow their governments, invade their countries and pillage their natural resources. But never before has there been an issue so politically inflammatory as the refusal of people living in the rich world to make even small sacrifices to avert a potential climate catastrophe. In Bangladesh, the Maldives, Bolivia, the Arctic, our climate pollution is directly responsible for destroying entire ways of life — yet we keep doing it.

From outside our borders, the climate crisis doesn’t look anything like the meteors or space invaders that Todd Stern imagined hurtling toward Earth. It looks, instead, like a long and silent war waged by the rich against the poor. And for that, regardless of what happens in Copenhagen, the poor will continue to demand their rightful reparations. “This is about the rich world taking responsibility for the damage done,” says Ilana Solomon, policy analyst for ActionAid USA, one of the groups recently converted to the cause. “This money belongs to poor communities affected by climate change. It is their compensation.”

[From Issue 1091 — November 12, 2009]

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30841581/climate_rage

Naomi Klein And Joseph Stiglitz Discuss The Cause And Effect Of The Financial Crisis

Courtesy of Tyler Durden

Alan Greenspan’s economic legacy is slowly but surely deterioration from that of one created by a "Maestro", to the deranged hungover flashbacks of the most inept monetarst dilettante and plutocrat puppet in the history of fiat capitalism. And with ever increasing honest and truthful observations as those shared by Naomi Klein and Joseph Stiglitz in the 1 hour + program attached, courtesy of Fora TV, only the remnants of the quickly evaporating close circle of Bernanke and Co., will have anything favorable left to say for the man who took the mundane task of building bubbles and converted it into rocket science so complex that only a few people at Goldman Sachs figured out how to benefit from it. We encourage all readers to spend some time watching the program before, just like Barney Frank and other bribed politicans, deciding that changing the status quo vis-a-vis the Fed is a step in the "wrong direction."

10 minute excerpt below:

Watch the full program or select from the following clips. We would like to draw your attention to clips 2, 7, 11 and 13

01.    Introduction
02.    Flawed Economic Model
03.    Economic Power and Ideology
04.    Collapse of Trust in Legal System
05.    Legal Means of Assistance
06.    Effects of Bailout
07.    How This Crisis Came About
08.    New Unregulated Markets
09.    Modern Capitalism Separates Ownership and Control
10.    Control
11.    Government Controlled by Banking Interest
12.    Property Information System
13.    Protection of Wealthy and Powerful
14.    Documentation of Who Owns What
15.    New Orleans Troubles
16.    Foreclosures are Economic Katrinas

*****

Art: Courtesy of Dangerous Minds

Facts
Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the fourth Thursday in November in the United States.

By the fall of 1621 only half of the pilgrims, who had sailed on the Mayflower, survived. The survivors, thankful to be alive, decided to give a thanksgiving feast.

Thanksgiving Day is celebrated on the second Monday in October in Canada.

The Plymouth Pilgrims were the first to celebrate the Thanksgiving.

The pilgrims arrived in North America in December 1620.

The Pilgrims sailed across the Atlantic Ocean to reach North America.

The pilgrims sailed on the ship, which was known by the name of ‘Mayflower’.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day in the fall of 1621.

They celebrated the first Thanksgiving Day at Plymouth, Massachusetts.

The drink that the Puritans brought with them in the Mayflower was the beer.

The Wampanoag Indians were the people who taught the Pilgrims how to cultivate the land.

The Pilgrim leader, Governor William Bradford, had organized the first Thanksgiving feast in the year 1621 and invited the neighboring Wampanoag Indians also to the feast.

The first Thanksgiving feast was held in the presence of around ninety Wampanoag Indians and the Wampanoag chief, Massasoit, was also invited there.

The first Thanksgiving celebration lasted three days.

President George Washington issued the first national Thanksgiving Day Proclamation in the year 1789 and again in 1795.

The state of New York officially made Thanksgiving Day an annual custom in 1817.

Sarah Josepha Hale, an editor with a magazine, started a Thanksgiving campaign in 1827 and it was result of her efforts that in 1863 Thanksgiving was observed as a day for national thanksgiving and prayer.

Abraham Lincoln issued a ‘Thanksgiving Proclamation’ on third October 1863 and officially set aside the last Thursday of November as the national day for Thanksgiving. Whereas earlier the presidents used to make an annual proclamation to specify the day when Thanksgiving was to be held.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt restored Thursday before last of November as Thanksgiving Day in the year 1939. He did so to make the Christmas shopping season longer and hus stimulate the economy of the state.

Congress passed an official proclamation in 1941 and declared that now onwards Thanksgiving will be observed as a legal holiday on the fourth Thursday of November every year.

        http://www.akidsheart.com/holidays/thanks/turkswap.htm

Turkey/Pig Swap Game VERY FRUSTRATING!

It’s no secret that Arabs love logos. Nothing instantly pushes you up the social-class ladder than graphically branding yourself with the latest symbol of chicness. The right logo expresses confidence, plays into our competitive nature, and feeds off the insistent desire to impress others. FYI, not just any brand will do; we are not talking about the over-exposed Coach or Juicy Couture (even Burberry was described to me by an Arab socialite as “the poor man’s luxury label”).  Today, the nouveaux riches are aiming higher than ever to find brands that transcend the popular and mark them as unique yet still part of the high-class elite. In trendy restaurants from New York to London to Dubai, you can observe this phenomenon on the Arab ladies who lunch. They sit and casually gossip with limited-edition Hermes Birkins strategically perched on the table and Louboutin red-soled platforms peeping from underneath. Forget therapy, wrapping an Arab woman head-to-toe in interlacing Cs, Gs, LVs or patterned Fs will resolve any self-esteem issues.

This obsession with labels is shifting from the lady of the house to her husband and kids. The sight of middle-aged Arab men wearing Prada ankle boots and flashy Gucci belts has become common. For the Arab male, the visibilty of the logo is of extreme importance. He will not choose these Prada’s, but these. He knows that investing in a high-quality item from an obscure designer, or worse a well-known designer with no logo, is idiotic. Even Arab newborns have been dipped in Burberry plaid from bottle to stroller to diaper covers. What better way to show your love? That is only until they are old enough (12 months) to wear Rock & Republic jeans.

What to do if you are an Arab recessionista? Please don’t resort to buying fakes because that is sooo wrong and your Lebanese friends will out your sad imitation faster than you can say kharrat/liar. Luckily you can go here or here to rent the latest handbags, jewelry, or dresses hot off the runway. So that YSL Roady that you have been eyeing forlikever can be yours in 3-5 business days. It’s like Netflix for your closet. Enjoy and you’re welcome.

But seriously, some words of wisdom from 1990: “I just hope you understand, sometimes the clothes do not make the man.”

From Engage:

Here are some boycotters of Israel after a successful campaign to rid Sussex University Student Union’s shelves of all those mounds of Israeli produce which were there before. But what is this? The feet of our international conscience appear to be clad in Nike. Haven’t these people read Naomi Klein from back when she was good?

And here’s a plan, by the Socialist Action-owned Palestine Solidarity Campaign, to smash Israeli growers and pickers on pretext of justice for Palestinians (who probably don’t want that kind of help).

Anybody who decides to participate in this boycott should understand that they are hurting modestly-remunerated Israeli growers and pickers.

///

Oh, and do you want an ethical microwave?

A further problem – the most recent issue of Ethical Consumer mag had a sunny ‘Boycott Israel Special’ news roundup, in which the only dissenting voice was a tiny expression of dismay from David Miliband. In this jolly little special, they promoted the academic, social and material boycott campaign without setting out what they hope to topple with the boycott (end Israel?), nor the ways in which they expect the boycott to effect this (clerical fascists win?), nor the endpoints for the boycott (Israel is cancelled), nor the difference between avoiding helping the settler movement on the one hand and boycotting all of Israel on the other (the difference is enormous), nor any history of the conflict (i.e. that there are two sides). I found Ethical Consumer deeply unethical, and am almost certain that they would have been promoting a boycott of Jews in 1930s Germany, simply because it was going on at the time and consumer boycotts make them happy. So I find this unsettling, as would you if you were trying to buy in such a way that you did the right thing by people, animals and the planet, and the organisation you turned to for serious input revealed some rather squalid practices of its own. To put it another way – I no longer have confidence Ethical Consumer’s judgement. Good Shopping’s write-ups are undated. Incidentally, I haven’t analysed the difference between Ethical Consumer and Good Shopping. Perhaps they split back in the day… rivalry at the top or something.

So, after toying with a Whirlpool model which cost £100 more and didn’t seem to promise any extra quality, we ended up going for a simple £64 Sanyo model.

Bonus links: Team Sweat, Nike Malaysia slave labour investigation on YouTube, Nike hooked on sweatshops, Nike FAQs, Nike sweatshop slavery in China, Global Exchange Nike campaign, E4J Nike campaign, Behind the swoosh,

Previous Naomi Klein posts: Handling complexity, Boycott Naomi.

Previous keffiyeh-clad hipster posts: Playing at revolution, Not kewl.

Ungeniert, zynisch und wütend deckt Naomi Klein in ihren akrybischen Recherchen die Machenschaften der multinationalen Konzerne wie Nike, Adidas, Coca Cola, Tommy Hilfiger & Co. auf, um uns die nackte brutale Wahrheit auf dem Teller zu präsentieren. Auf der Jagd nach Coolness und den Trends von Morgen senden die mächtigsten und angesagtesten Labels (z.B. H&M) täglich hunderte von Trendscouts in die Welt hinaus, um die Coolness einzufangen und zu kommerzialisieren.

Trends sind immer ein Spiegelbild der Gesellschaft, in der sie entstehen. Ein Trend geht stets einher mit den wirtschaftlichen und soziokulturellen Veränderungen einer Gesellschaft oder einer ganzen Generation. Er rekonstruiert sich selbst immer wieder im neuen Kontext, um das ‘Überraschende’ und ‘Neue’ beim Adopter (dem Empfänger einer Botschaft, der sie annimmt und für sich sozialisiert) zu bewirken. Trends sind in allen Bereichen wie Gesundheit, Sport, Musik, Mode, Kultur, Umwelt, etc. vorzufinden. Vor diesem Hintergrund lauert die Gefahr des ‘Branding Overload’ in allen Bereichen unseres Lebens – bis in die unscheinbarsten Ecken.

Mehr denn je wird in Amerika das Leben bestimmt von Marken und Logos, sogar bis tief in die Klassenzimmer mit unmanipulierbaren Screendisplays als Werbespotträger. Hier in Deutschland herrscht zwar noch per Gesetz die werbefreie Zone in den Schulen und anderen Bildungseinrichtungen, die ersten Anzeichen der Liberalisierung für den Kapitalismus sind jedoch unverkennbar. In Berlin und Hamburg machen sich die Sparkassen seit Jahren an den Universitäten breit, dagegen wehren tut sich bis anno dato seltsamerweise niemand.

Wenn wir heute nicht bewusst darüber nachdenken, was wir kaufen, werden unsere Kinder morgen über den Campus laufen, um die Speisekarte von Adobe zu studieren, die O2-Arena als Lesesaal zu nutzen, oder Nike Town als Platz zum Daten vorschlagen.

Naomi Klein gibt in ihrem Buch erste Denkansätze darüber, wie wir uns wehren können. Eine ultimative Lösung gibt es hierfür – wie alles im Leben – jedoch nicht.

"Going Rouge: An American Nightmare" is now available for purchase at www.orbooks.com

It was just six weeks ago that OR Books, the new publishing company set up by John Oakes and myself, decided to enter the fray against Sarah Palin by publishing our now much talked-about anthology, “Going Rouge.” In doing so, we realized we would not be competing on a level playing field. The book we were up against, Sarah Palin’s own “Going Rogue,” is the lead title this fall from HarperCollins, a subsidiary of Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp, one of the largest media corporations on earth. Harper had agreed to pay the ex-Alaskan governor an advance reputed to be $7 million dollars, aiming to make at least some of this back from a first printing of one and half million copies. Pre-sales alone had taken their book to number one on Amazon.

On our side, the resources were less extravagant. OR Books has a full-time staff of two, John and me, together with help from a small group of talented part-timers. The OR office rotates between the Eros café on New York’s 7th Avenue during the day, and the bar at El Quijote, next to the Chelsea Hotel, at night. The more stressful the day, the earlier we head for the evening office. “Going Rouge,” a dazzling philippic of acrid Palintology assembled by Nation editors Richard Kim and Betsy Reed, is our first book.

Battling on such unpromising terrain, we realized that employing the strength of our opponents against themselves held the best, perhaps the only, chance of success. Call it the jujitsu approach to publishing. It involved positioning our book so that whenever “Going Rogue” was discussed, “Going Rouge” would be brought into the frame too. We had to become the skunk at Palin’s garden party.

We were helped in this in a number of ways: First was the devilish play on Harper Collins’ title (the creation of the book’s agent Deirdre Mullane) that we took as our own. There is something about the juxtaposition of “Rogue” and “Rouge” that reduces otherwise firm minds to jelly. It led to a variety of gratifying high profile mix-ups of the two books on cable television, including twice on CNN, and prompted someone identified only as SR to respond angrily to our Nation magazine email promotion: “Going ROUGE? It’s ROUGE [sic], not rouge. What an embarrassment. Don’t you have proof-readers?”

We had sharpened the satirical edge of our cover by selecting a portrait of Palin that bore an uncanny similarity to that on her own book. It features the same distant gaze that she regularly adopts, perhaps to keep a watchful eye on the Russians across the Bering Strait. We distinguished our cover by setting her against a dark, stormy sky and by including the subtitle “Sarah Palin – An American Nightmare“.

But most important to our jujitsu strategy was the media’s infatuation with what they call “both sides of the story.” In fact the supposedly even-handed approach of mainstream media is generally a fiction. The fulcrum is rarely placed at the center of the real debate. We can have a raging controversy about whether more troops should be sent to Afghanistan or whether the existing numbers should be maintained, but you’ll be hard pressed to find any respectable commentator joining with what the majority of Americans and Afghanis appear to want, which is that we just pull out.

Pretense of balance is, however, vital to the way media sells itself and “Going Rouge” thus became a handy counterweight to its competitor. “Satire or Sabotage?” trumpeted the hosts of Entertainment Tonight’s “The Insider” in their segment on the book. “You decide!” Similar weighing of the alternatives appeared on “Hardball” and “Countdown,” and in Entertainment Weekly and the Los Angeles Times. Even Fox News, co-owned by the same corporation as our rival publisher, speculated on which book would sell most, concluding it would probably be Palin’s because “she’s appearing on Oprah“.

This juxtaposition of the two books has produced a torrent of orders. We are now selling hundreds each day. It has also enraged many Sarah Palin supporters, as evidenced by the flood of caustic e-mails arriving in the OR Books comment box. Some are sniffily self-righteous: ” It is obvious you won’t make it in decent circles as you have no moral compass,” wrote a budding Miss Manners from VA. Others are more direct: “I will … be on the watch for other slippery, conniving, left winged [sic] corporations or organizations that attempt to sway political opinion with fake products …Sneaky, conniving, crooks!” And a few are darkly menacing, including one that juxtaposes photographs of spent bullets next to a description of the publishers, resulting in my partner sleeping even less than usual.

But this sort of thing goes with the territory. And for every raging conservative who has assailed us for “making a buck off the backs of honest capitalists!” there have been others, from all around the country, who have written to thank us for taking the fight to Palin. Here, for instance is the manager from a Midwestern branch of a large chain bookstore: “My corporate office recently scheduled an event that, although will bring me tons of business, does little to excite me and make me happy. Sarah Palin will be signing her new book at my store. I not only despise the woman, but, as a female, think she is a disgrace to those of us who actually have some common sense … good luck with the book.” (It was with regret that we had to inform her that our paperback is currently available only online–at www.orbooks.com).

Our resolve stiffened by such heartwarming support, we now head into the final round of Rogue vs Rouge. Publication day for both books is this Tuesday, November 17th. The night before, for the red corner, Palin will appear on Oprah; for the blue, we have Nation editor Katrina vanden Heuvel on Larry King Live. Naomi Klein will appear on CNN the following morning. In between, we will be gathering at a nightclub in Chelsea to “Paint the Town Rouge” in the company of a few Sarah Palin lookalikes, an Alaskan flag, and a great deal of booze. We already know it’s going to be a victory celebration, sweeter, we’re sure, than anything happening over at HarperCollins.

“Going Rouge: Sarah Palin – An American Nightmare” is available ONLY direct from OR Books at www.orbooks.com

Colin Robinson
The Huffington Post

Jag lyssnar på nedladdad nätradio när jag diskar och lagar mat. En underbart sätt att lära sig om filosofi, ekologi, samhälle och kultur. Ett tag lyssnade jag på föreläsningar från olika universitet i USA. Det finns mycket hög kvalitet och ingen ursäkt längre för att inte förbli bildad.

Lite musik, lite kommentarer, tidslängden ungefär 40 minuter. Det är perfekt att lyssna på medan man bearbetar gårdagens disk. Trodde jag i alla fall när jag laddade ner avsnitt från Timbros nätradio. Att jag håller med om deras grundtankar gjorde ju inte saken sämre. Mina tankar behövde inte bemöda sig. Men efter tre avsnitt vägrar jag att lyssna på mer. Vilken smörja!

Med det kan man jämföra den Naomi Kleinintervju jag lyssnade på. De diskuterade Chockdoktrinen. Det var ingen musik, inslagen var korta. Jag hann t.o.m. lyssna på ett avsnitt av philosophy bites, en nätradio jag starkt rekommenderar för den filosofiintresserade, innan jag var färdig med disken. Hon är en person vars åsikter jag är starkt kritisk till. Trots det kändes det mödan värt att lyssna och ta till sig om det hon sa. Hennes beskrivning av chicagopojkarna, USAs handlande mot Chile och tankarna kring hennes begrepp chockdoktrinen osv. En fröjd.

Timbros avsnitt var däremot en samling av tråkigt staplade fattiga argument, utan vilja till problematisering eller kontextbeskrivning; det fanns igen ambition till att tvinga mig till reflektion. Det är märkligt. För de jag lyssnade till var Carl Rudbeck, vars essäer jag läst och beundrat i Axess, David Eberhard som gjorde ett strålande framträdande i filosofiska rummet, jokern i leken var Maria Ranka, som jag inte hade hört talas om innan. Nu vet jag att hon är VD för timbro. Hennes program var sämst och det, om igen, trots att ämnet intresserade mig. Det handlade om mobilitet.

Läs beskrivningen av hennes program:

Maria Rankka pratar om mobilitet. Om resor som förändrar. Hon fascineras av allt som rör sig, människor, tankar, företag och länder. Maria tar oss med till platser som Oslo och Ulan Bator. Hon åker bil, pendeltåg och flyg när resandet inte är av det mentala slaget. Den stora frågan är varför så många vill begränsa vår rörlighet.

Ett slående tillfälle att begrunda, filosofera, problematisera, men det slutade med att jag satt och slölyssnade och studerade Google Earth, vilket var bra mycket mer givande.

Om ambitionen ska vara så låg kan de lika gärna lägga ner deras podradio.

part 1

part 2

I know this is completely off-topic, but I want to bring this to people’s attention.  I doubt very seriously the U.S. media will cover this story much (though I found out about this through Rachel Maddow, I don’t expect the story to get wide circulation on the teevee) but word needs to get out about this…

The U.S. Congress continually blocked any child labour bills and the U.S. never even adopted any kind of federal child labour laws until 1938 under FDR.  Of course, that hasn’t stopped large corporations from building sweatshops overseas, bypassing any labour laws, and making a bigger profit in the end.

So along comes a proposed bill in Congress that would involve the banning of all imported goods produced through indentured child labour and other forms of forced labour.  Guess who is opposed to such a thing?

The way to stop this is for the world’s largest economies to establish basic rules which everyone else will inevitably follow as a price of admission to those economies’ markets. If the United States says companies cannot sell products in our market made with child slave labor, most companies will cease making products with child slave labor fearing the loss of access to our market which would destroy their business.

Of course, that’s why business has opposed every effort to put basic labor, environmental and human rights standards into our international trade agreements – and why business groups are now preparing to try to weaken the laws barring products made with child slave labor. They know that the less rules that exist in the American market, the more cost-cutting exploitation they can engage in.

That corporations’ advocacy for deregulation has now become so brazen that they are effectively pushing the U.S. government to endorse child slave labor is predictable. This is what their globalization agenda has always been all about. The only thing surprising about it is that in a Washington so overtly dominated by Big Money, it has taken them this long to be this blatant about their objectives.

Foreign countries who have also attracted such sweatshops are also opposed to it, unsurprisingly.  The bill is sponsored by Max Baucus (D-MT) and Charles Grassley (R-IA).

Also, read THIS.

“The Third World is not a reality but an ideology.”

~ Hannah Arendt

The Yes Men Fix the World é un  esilarante documentario sulle birbonate di Andy Bichlbaum e Mike Bonanno, paladini della notizia… perché a volte è necessario mentire per poter dire la verità!

Un film sull’ingordigia delle multinazionali, sugli orrori delle compagnie petrolifere e sulle vomitevoli lobby che muovono i governi dei paesi più ricchi del mondo. Guardatelo in versione integrale a questo link.

Nein, ein Mediziner bin ich nicht. Trotzdem möchte ich einige Lektüreempfehlungen zur Frage der Angemessenheit des Impfens aussprechen, die vor allem populäre soziologische Betrachtungsweisen wiedergeben. Insofern kommt dieser Einwurf von der Seitenlinie.

Ulrich Beck: Weltrisikogesellschaft

Herr Beck beschäftigt sich damit, was Risiken sind und wie sie weltweit verteilt werden. In einem Interview mit der Welt sagt Herr Beck unter anderem:

Menschen glauben plötzlich an Ereignisse, die außerhalb ihres Lebens- und Erfahrungshorizontes liegen – und die dennoch dazu führen, dass sie mehr oder weniger konsequent von ihrem bisherigen Lebensstil und ihrem bisherigen Erwartungen an Freiheit und Wohlstand Abschied nehmen.

Zygmunt Baumann: Leben in der flüchtigen Moderne

Herr Baumann beschreibt die Bewegungen der Aufmerksamkeit in der postmodernen Gesellschaft. In einem französischsprachigen Interview führt Herr Baumann aus:

Nous avons donc besoin d’intellectuels pour nous faire prendre conscience de la réalité de certains dangers invisibles à l’oeil nu, mais aussi pour nous mettre en garde contre les menaces imaginaires ­inventées à des fins politiques ou commerciales.

Naomi Klein: The Shock Doctrine

Frau Klein beschreibt, wie Katastrophen dazu ausgenutzt werden um Macht- und Güterverteilungen neu zu ordnen.  In einem Interview mit der Zeit sagt sie:

Ich bin doch nicht gegen Regeln oder Einschränkungen. Sie müssen aber durch Information und Argumente eine Akzeptanz schaffen. Sie können das mit der Gesellschaft tun statt gegen sie, wir haben das bloß vergessen.

Cass R Sunstein und Richard H Thaler: Nudge

Herr Sunstein und Herr Thaler zeigen auf, wie vorgegebene Anordnungen dazu eingesetzt werden um Menschen zu “besseren” Entscheidungen zu bewegen. In einem bei Christoph Koch wiedergegeben Interview sagt Herr Thaler:

Voreinstellungen nehmen uns Entscheidungen ab, wir können auf Autopilot schalten, statt nachdenken zu müssen. Oft geben uns Voreinstellungen auch das Gefühl: »Das ist die Wahl, die die meisten Leute getroffen haben – sie kann also auch für mich nicht so schlecht sein.« Stimmt nur leider nicht immer.

La crisis no matará al capitalismo, ni siquiera lo cambiará sustancialmente. Sin la enorme presión popular a favor de una reforma estructural, la crisis sólo implicará una dislocación solucionable. El resultado será una desigualdad aún mayor que la anterior a la crisis. Los mercados financieros son rescatados para impedir que el barco del capitalismo se hunda, pero no se desagota agua, sino gente, en nombre de la “estabilización”. El resultado será un barco más pequeño y peor. Porque una mayor desigualdad -gente muy rica viviendo junto a desesperados- exige una mayor dureza de corazón. Necesitamos creernos superiores a los excluidos para vivir cada día.

¿Nuestra tarea será rescatar este barco, el mayor barco pirata que existió, o reemplazarlo por una nave más sólida, con espacio para todos? Uno que no requiera que arrojemos a nuestros vecinos por la borda para salvar a los pasajeros de primera clase. Uno que entienda que la Tierra no tiene la capacidad para que todos nosotros vivamos cada vez mejor, pero sí la tiene para que todos vivamos bien. El capitalismo sobrevivirá a esta crisis, pero el mundo no puede sobrevivir a otro retorno del capitalismo.

Ese el final de un artículo como siempre genial de Naomi Klein que salió en La Nación y está muy relacionado a este de ecoperiódico donde describen porqué cayeron los Nazcas:

…tras seiscientos años de éxito continuado ocurrió algo inesperado: un verdadero diluvio acompañado de vientos huracanados barrió la región durante semanas en una manifestación extrema del fenómeno del Niño. Sin la protección de los bosques, la erosión de las tierras y el daño en el sistema de canales resultaron irreparables. El esquema del auge y caída de Nazca es sencillo: una innovación tecnológica permite un crecimiento aparentemente sostenible y escalable; sin embargo, un fenómeno catastrófico y exógeno muestra, cuando ya es demasiado tarde, que hacía tiempo se había traspasado una barrera invisible que no permitirá volver a levantar cabeza. El punto débil no está, obviamente en la innovación tecnológica en si misma, sino en la dificultad para descubrir su punto de criticidad, aquel momento en el que seguir haciendo lo mismo que hasta entonces nos permitió crecer pone en peligro el edificio social entero.

At the moment I am reading No Logo by Naomi Klein.  It is based around the idea of ‘the rise of the brand’ in the late eighties and into the nineties.  Although it is now ten years old it is still both an interesting and relevant read.

The reason I mention this is because it got me thinking about the relationship between football, sponsorship and branding.  In recent weeks the spectre of stadium sponsorship has reared its ugly head at both Fulham and Newcastle, although to a more serious extent at the latter.  In the case of Fulham I doubt that there is really anything to worry about. The Fenway Sports Group who have become consultants to Fulham and mooted the idea of a name change have a tradition of focusing on the history of clubs when marketing them. I think a rename of Craven Cottage is about as likely as a rename of Fenway Park. In the case of Newcastle, Ashley wants cash and it is likely that a rename is on the cards as long as he cannot sell the club.

If we look at stadium sponsorship pragmatically, then it is an excellent idea. In exchange for something of relatively little economic value ( a name) you receive lots of money. It is of course not that simple. In the UK and to some extent across Europe stadium names are sacred ground. In the UK the few sponsored stadiums are generally new builds (see The Reebok and KC stadium).  Nostalgia surrounding names is still strong and viewed as central to the identity of many clubs.

The question is if this will change. I believe that it is only a matter of time before football goes the way of US sports. Ever since the creation of the brand that is the Premier League, football has been steadily progressing to total branding. The big clubs have led the way (notice how Manchester United are not an FC any more) and others are sure to follow. Football teams do have an innate advantage in the branding process in that they posses badges. These logos give the club an immediate graphic identity and a base for the brand to be built. Football is also surrounded by companies which really spearheaded the rise of the brand such as Nike. The logical next step for advertising and branding in football is stadium sponsorship. With many clubs looking to move into new stadiums over the next few years stadium sponsorship is inevitable.

What does this mean for the game? Without wanting to sound like a paranoid conspiracy theorist, the inevitable end is the end of real competition. We have seen a shift in power upward to the ‘big 4′ in the premier league and this will continue.  A European ’super league’ would be the ultimate form of branded corporate football, a place where the most powerful teams engage in a perpetual struggle similar to that of the warring nations Oceana, Eurasia and Eastasia in 1984.

I know that this seems like another moan from a supporter of a club outside the top four but I do think there are some important points that need to be addressed. The lack of competition in the Premier League and others across Europe is a real worry.  Whilst at the moment the ascension of Man City and other clubs sustained by heavy investment gives the illusion of competition, these clubs are based on a bubble which could burst at any time.  The FA, UEFA and FIFA really need to look into imposing limits on squad size and wages before the brands at the top become too powerful.

So we here at CoG have all decided to write a post where we talk about five major influences on our thinking. Since this is a blog about Christianity in no small part, we added the degree of difficulty that Jesus is off limits. I don’t pretend that any of what I write should be considered as the definitive commentaries on these authors. Moreover I would not take this as a “required reading” list as much as I would a sort of intellectual autobiography – I wanted these to be authors who had changed my thinking in one way or another. Now that the caveats are out of the way, here goes:

1. Fyodor Dostoevsky: I don’t think there’s anything new or original that I can add to what has been said about Dostoevsky. Probably inferior to Tolstoy as a conventional novelist – but that’s not at all what he was trying for – at least I don’t think it was. Again to say that Dostoevsky’s grasp of human nature was profound seems cliche. Nonetheless like most people who encounter Dostoevsky for the first time in their late teens or early 20s, I was quite struck by these same observations. His characters are so real and yet so unreal – Shakespearian perhaps? Unlike so many artists who experience a religious conversion, Dostoevsky never got maudlin or sentimental. He did not spare the church or the faithful in his works. His observations on the human condition defy reduction the way those of a good writer should. I’ll end with one of my favourites:

“As a general rule, people, even the wicked, are much more naive and simple-hearted than we suppose. And we ourselves are, too.”

2. Naomi Klein’s No Logo: I know this book can feel stuck in the late-90s zeitgeist in which it was written. Why put it down on list of books that influence me? So here’s my case for Naomi Klein: In 2000 when I read No Logo my political sympathies were different than they are now – I thought that Mike Harris conservatism was a superb way to run a government – low taxes and laissez faire policies would let business improve everything on its own. The lasting effect of No Logo on my thinking has little to do with the whole “battle of Seattle” culture-jamming moment of its release (No Logo itself didn’t put too much stock in that kind of street theatre as a way to remake society). Rather it has given me an abiding suspicion of free markets – mainly because this book made it clear to me how much global corporations actually seek to use their power to undermine free markets. Changing the world is perhaps best done outside of both corporate and government structures as much as possible – a thesis that Klein would further develop in her film, The Take.

3. Slavoj Žižek is a difficult one to argue for on this list since I’d never read anything by him until, say, about a year ago. That said, a lot of what Žižek says seems to have already colonized my thinking.

Here’s what I think I’ve learned from him: Žižek illuminates the falsehoods of those who claim that they are non-ideological or post-ideological. Such claims, according to Žižek, are nothing but attempts to smuggle in some kind of a priori ideology and silence critics by accusing them of being the ones who are ideological. Žižek also does a superb job of arguing that modern New Age movements are stalking horses for class-society and oppression. By appealing for harmony and inner peace such groups are really trying to get people to acquiesce to a system that Christians and Marxists can both see (albeit perhaps for not all the same reasons) as oppressive. In fact, Žižek believes that both groups are natural allies against the New Age since both teach that real transformation is possible in this world (as opposed to some immaterial underlying spiritual realm). Related to this refusal to acquiesce to the New Age’s harmonious world perhaps is Žižek’s analysis of violence. Acts of subjective violence: riots, terrorism, assassinations are carried out by individuals or groups that transgress the state’s rules. Meanwhile the state possesses the tools of objective violence, the violence of the system – police, army, prison system, et cetera. Since most of us take these powers of state for granted, these constitute a sort of “background” violence. Transgressing the state is violent, but often so is acquiescing to the state – this is a challenge to pacifism – Christian and otherwise in that our choice is often between different kinds of violence.

4. Robertson Davies was a surprise pick – to me at least, and I’m making the list! He’s the second author on this list who is primarily known for his fiction, though I would argue that he’s the reason that there are fiction authors on this list at all. As a fiction author Davies captured that uniquely Canadian sense of being on the outside looking in at other people’s lives (Fifth Business). The entire Deptford Trilogy explores the idea that there are multiple narratives that apply to any story and that we almost inevitably tell our stories based around a narrative that centers on us – even when we, like Ramsay, try not to do so. From World of Wonders:

“Look at what the politicians write about themselves! Churchill and Hitler and all the rest of them seem suddenly to be secondary figures surrounding Sir Numbskull Poop, who is always in the limelight.”

The Lacanian idea that we are always telling stories about ourselves is something that gets explored in Fifth Business without all that Lacanian language. Stories and myths are of great importance in The Merry Heart, a collection of Davies’ works on writing. This gave me an abiding respect for myth as word that does not refer to a falsehood in need of “busting,” but rather one that denotes the narrative that explains us.

5. Charles Taylor’s book A Secular Age seems like a difficult one to justify being on this list. I mean, it’s only two years old and I only finished it a couple months ago. Nonetheless, Taylor’s conception of what it means to live in a “secular age” and his charting of Western society as it moves from the late medieval period through to the 21st Century is remarkable. Taylor dispenses with the typical “subtraction stories” that claim that the development of secularism and of an exclusive materialism was merely a process of taking away progressive layers of superstition. The story of how we came to be living in our current age is far more interesting and far more nuanced than most of us have been led to believe. As far as how this book has affected me, I think part of that still has to be determined. A Secular Age re-invigorated my passion for history – particularly the history of philosophy. I don’t know where that will lead, maybe I’ll revisit this one in a couple years.

So there you have my list, I’ll tag Andrew and Keith to go next.

Every day is a challenge. I never want to be one of those people who sits down and says… Today I can rest; today I’ve achieved it all, today I have no aim, no growth, no learning.

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The name of my office manager is Sandy. Think of her as the 60-year-old “Joan” of my agency. She has an intimidating English accent, a poised walk, and wears a pristine blazer always popped at the collar. She walked into my boardroom/office and said “Christina darling, here is the welcome package…” going through it slowly she stopped at one particular page that interested me “…And here is the retirement speech of Mr. Leo Burnett — you know, the man who created Leo Burnett in Chicago? — I suggest you read it. It is quite inspiring… “

That was in the morning. For the better part of my day, there wasn’t much for me to do. I set up my voicemail, looked up some rating numbers for different TV stations… And after bugging my new friend Brad and going downstairs to chat with my other friend Tiara, it was 3:30 pm and all of my assignments were complete. I sat before my computer with Leo’s speech to the left of me and its lyrics still circling my head… “Better advertising is what the Leo Burnett Company is about…” In the midst of my trance, I had somehow navigated Firefox to a page: the website of Naomi Klein.

Firstly, I think the woman is brilliant. The amount of research that goes into her books is incredible. Unlike many non-fiction books where research begins to pop out of the page like a separate entity, with Naomi, this is not the case. I’ve read some non-fictions which pull out statistic after statistic after statistic with minimal journalistic-flow and a complete lack of prose. It’s one thing to be an apt researcher or an eloquent writer. But to be a combination of the two? — Brilliant.

Anyway, I read her short biography and some reviews of her first book, NO LOGO. Basically, the book is about “branding” — Yes, this is the business I am in. It’s a book about some of the most branded multinational organizations taking a shrewd path in expelling the idea of choice, interactivity, and freedom for workers. “It’s about the Nike ’swoosh’, the theme parks (we) visit and the films (we) go to see… It’s about magazines, rock music, universities and the Internet. In short, it’s a book about everyday reality – or, rather, what lies behind it.”

So back to this challenge I was talking about earlier. I’m 4 days in. Only 4 days into this agency and I’m about to read a book called NO LOGO? Only 4 days in; still learning the business, still a ways away from receiving those court-side Raptors tickets, still eager to make money, still trying to network and to make friends… But still, completely affected by the thought of my Banana Republic work dress being made by my 10-year-old 3rd-world relative just so I can go about my day with a greater sense of confidence?

I sit in an office full of windows over-looking Bloor Street. I run out of paper work at 3:30 pm. I spend my evenings preparing my lunch and moaning from exhaustion. I stroll about perkily in a Banana Republic work dress and Tommy Hilfiger trench coat from 8:00 am – 6:00 pm while my younger counterpart, whomever he or she is, is confined to life of irreconcilable circumstances and …sewing? Seriously. I ask seriously… What did I do to deserve all of this?

I work on behalf of TD Canada Trust for goodness’ sake. Logos, branding, advertising, marketing, corporatism, consumerism — whatever you want to call it — is my business. Clearly, my heart and my lifestyle are at-home to different things; clearly, I will continue at the agency but clearly, I feel accountable… Clearly, this my challenge.

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ps. I’ve been getting so much feedback from people about this blog. Initially I just needed an outlet to express myself and to practice writing. To think that people actually enjoy reading about my struggles/triumphs/everything-in-between? — It’s astonishing. Sincerely, Thank You.

pps. Also, when I said in the last post (which I have now deleted) that I wouldn’t be blogging as much — I lied.

Paul Bremer: The Thief of Baghdad

This week there was yet another terrible attack in Iraq.  I have to say previously I’ve struggled to understand what’s going on in the country, mainly because I am, and I dare say so are most Brits and Americans, pretty ignorant of Iraqi history and culture.  This was one of the reasons I didn’t think the Iraq war was a very good idea at all.  However, reading the chapters on Iraq in Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine have been enlightening.  You don’t have to be an expert in history, or Arab culture, or economics, or anything for that matter to see what is happening there.

It’s often been said the war in Iraq was all about oil.  That’s not even the half of it.  What the American government did to Iraq was nothing short of mugging on a national scale.  When the Americans took control through the CPA, all of Iraq’s 200 state run industries and factories were sold off – almost exclusivly to American companies.

Were Iraqis consulted about this?  Were they fuck.  As we all know Bush made plenty of noble statements about bringing freedom and democracy to Iraq and defeating Al Qaeda – all in the nice, tedious English we’d expect from such a simpleton.  What actually happened was far from democratic and actually contributed to a rise in religious extremism.

As Klein points out, in May 2003 Paul Bremer was installed as essentially a temporary dictator of Iraq and given power of decree.  What he said became law.  There were no elections before this, no referenda.  Amongst his decrees (which I’m sure he took in the Iraqis best interests) was to sell off all the public factories to American businesses.  Furthermore, these businesses were given the right to take 100% of their profits out of Iraq and then they were made exempt from Iraqi law.  Bremer also fired the entire civil service and removed price controls from essential items.

Klein points out that all of these measures are part of a economic shock doctrine established at the University of Chicago that has since been applied in many countries including Chile and Russia and, to a lesser extent, the UK.  The reasoning behind it is that only capitalist markets completely free from government control can succeed.  Of course, the shock doctrine’s measure of success is how rich the richest people get (in this case all American) and to hell with the poorer locals and it should by no means be applied voluntarily – you have to use violence to force it on people.  To put it simply, what the American government did to Iraq was violent theft.

So let’s look at it from an Iraqi’s point of view: assuming you survived the initial onslaught of the war, you go to work and find your factory has been taken over by an American company.  They promptly fire you in order to maximize profits in the country that just bombed you.  You go home and realise that you cannot afford to eat because price controls have been abolished.  You have no running water or electricity because there are no laws to make the American companies that run them do their job.  Have you voted for any of this?  No.  It’s not hard to see why so many violent extremists have cropped up.

Of course since Bremer there have been elections but this is of little practical importance since the Americans ensured Bremer’s decrees were irreversible.  Klein also alleges in her book that American companies hired to run local elections rigged results (349).  How do you think the Iraqi’s felt about all of this?

With this sort of anger on the streets Bremer made his most foolish decision: he fired the whole army.  The soldiers left their jobs and took their guns with them.

It cannot be a coincidence that the Justice Ministry was targeted this week.  Iraq’s legal system has been set up to benefit the American companies who stole everything of value from Iraq.  It wouldn’t surprise me if the bombers used weapons belonging to the old Iraqi army.

It’s said Al Qaeda linked organizations (there’s a whole article I could write on why that description is bullshit) took responsibility for the mass murder at the Justice Ministry.  If these organization existed before the invasion in Iraq they must have had very little support and certainly not enough to be capable of such outrages.  Certain Iraqis have simply done what people always do when they feel betrayed by the people running their country – turn to extremism.  If the American government’s aim was to bring democracy to Iraq they had a funny way of doing it and if it was to reduce the influence of mass murdering muslims then maybe they shouldn’t have plundered the country so blatantly.  Surely we can all understand this?

Het nieuwste boek van Naomi Klein is een thriller en wat ze beschrijft, is echt gebeurd. De Canadese journalist en activist gaat niet achter een onopgeloste moord of sekte aan. Nee, Klein schrijft over gebeurtenissen die we allemaal kennen van het Journaal.

Over New Orleans na Katrina, Sri Lanka na de Tsunami en New York na 9/11. Over Chili onder Pinochet en over Jeltsin die Ruslands parlement in brand stak. Over de junta in Argentinië en over oorlog in Irak.

Wat ze allemaal gemeen hebben, is een meervoudige shock. Eerst is er de crisis: een overstroming, staatsgreep of terroristische aanslag – shock nummer een. Dan komt de tweede shock: voordat de bange burgers weer bij zinnen zijn, worden ingrijpende economische hervormingen doorgevoerd. Die volgen een standaard recept: privatisering van overheidsdiensten, deregulering van de markt en terugdringing van overheidsuitgaven. Vaak volgt een derde shock: mensen die zich verzetten tegen de neoliberale verrassingsaanval, krijgen het zwijgen opgelegd. Soms zo hardhandig dat ze verdwijnen (Argentinië), worden gemarteld (Chili, Irak) of doodgeschoten (China).

Naomi Klein werd zeven jaar geleden wereldberoemd toen ze met NO LOGO het evangelie schreef voor andersglobalisten. Daarin liet ze zien hoe merken hun jeans en sportschoenen lieten maken in mensonterende naaiateliers. Toen de wereld wist wat een sweatshop was, waren Nike, Levi’s en de rest gedwongen om de mensen die hun ballen, broeken en schoenen naaien, fatsoenlijk te behandelen.

Het boek The Shock Doctrine, the Rise of Disaster Capitalism is ambitieuze onderzoeksjournalistiek. Klein trakteert op drie decennia, soms bloedstollende, economische geschiedenis. Het kwade genius achter het radicale vrijemarktdenken: de econoom Milton Friedman, Nobelprijswinnaar, goeroe voor neo-liberale economen en regeringsleiders. Toen Friedman eind vorig jaar overleed, 94 jaar oud, schreven kranten necrologieën als over een heilige. The Wall Street Journal noemde Friedman ‘FREEDOM-MAN’.

Leuke klankrijm, maar Kleins belangrijkste punt is dat daar niks van klopt. Kapitalisme brengt geen vrijheid. Integendeel. Omdat ongebreideld kapitalisme de meerderheid van de bevolking armer maakt, komen burgers tegen de vrije markt in opstand. En daar wordt een stokje voor gestoken. Door een alsmaar rijkere minderheid.

Klein kwam op het idee voor dit boek toen ze in 2003 Irak bezocht, vertelde ze afgelopen donderdag bij de Globaliseringslezing in het Amsterdamse Felix Meritis. Het was niet lang nadat Saddam Hoessein was afgezet en onder Amerikaans bewind werden nieuwe spelregels geschreven. Klein: ‘Terwijl Irakezen daas waren van de bombardementen, kregen ze een totaal nieuwe politieke en economische orde opgelegd.’ Een shock therapy. Ze vertelde dat haar tolk worstelde met het vertalen van maatregelen waar een Irakees geen woord voor heeft. Klein: ‘Hij wist niks van ‘privatisering’ omdat het als beleid niet bestond.’ Maar in Irak werd alles geprivatiseerd. Tot aan de oorlog aan toe. En overal verschenen Amerikaanse bedrijven om het geruïneerde land op te bouwen.

Daar zag Naomi Klein het patroon dat ze vervolgens herkende op tientallen andere plekken waar zich een crisis had voorgedaan: small government en big business vallen samen in het rampenkapitalisme. ‘Geen Amerikaans bedrijf heeft zo veel verdiend aan de oorlog in Irak als Halliburton’, zegt Klein. Het aandelenpakket van oud-Halliburton topman, vicepresident Dick Cheney, is nu miljoenen meer waard.

The Shock Doctrine zet meer dan eens de gangbare versie van de geschiedenis op zijn kop. Neem China, 1989, het bloedig neergeslagen studentenprotest op het Tiananmen-plein. Naomi Klein laat zien dat de studenten niet protesteerden tegen de communistische orde. Nee, ze verzetten zich tegen de neo-liberale hervormingen die Deng Xiaoping had bedacht, samen met, inderdaad: Milton Friedman. De communistische top zou zich enorm verrijken. En dus eisten de studenten een democratische stem om ‘nee’ te zeggen.

Tegelijkertijd laat het voorbeeld van China ook zien waar Klein minder goed in is. Ze heeft weinig oog voor gemengde motieven en toevalsfactoren. Zo maakt ze de geschiedenis minder weerbarstig dan die in werkelijkheid is. Haar wereld gaat zo een beetje lijken op een sprookje: je hebt goed en je hebt kwaad en ze zijn duidelijk te onderscheiden.

Hoe ironisch de geschiedenis kan zijn, laten diezelfde Chinese studenten zien. Amerika nodigde demonstranten uit als politiek vluchteling. Zeshonderdduizend gingen er naar de VS om te studeren, meer dan er ooit op het Plein hadden gestaan. Nu keren de meesten terug om – tweetalig en tweecultureel – succesvol zaken te doen in ultrakapitalistisch Sjanghai.

Zijn het dit soort constateringen waarbij de activist de journalist in de weg loopt? Klein: ‘De echte sprookjeswereld is wat ons door Reagan of Bush wordt voorgehouden.’