Klein - The Shock Doctrine: the Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Now the earth was corrupt in Gods sight, and the earth was filled with violence. And God saw that the earth was corrupt; for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them; now I am going to destroy them along with the earth.

Genesis 6:11 (NRSV)

Shock and Awe are actions that create fears, dangers, and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements/sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine, and disease can engender Shock and Awe.

Shock and Awe: Achieving Rapid Dominance, the military doctrine for the U.S. war on Iraq

I met Jamar Perry in September 2005, at the big Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dinner was being doled out by grinning young Scientologists, and he was standing in line. I had just been busted for talking to evacuees without a media escort and was now doing my best to blend in, a white Canadian in a sea of African-American Southerners. I dodged into the food line behind Perry and asked him to talk to me as if we were old friends, which he kindly did.

Born and raised in New Orleans, hed been out of the flooded city for a week. He looked about seventeen but told me he was twenty-three. He and his family had waited forever for the evacuation buses; when they didnt arrive, they had walked out in the baking sun. Finally they ended up here, a sprawling convention center, normally home to pharmaceutical trade shows and Capital City Carnage: The Ultimate in Steel Cage Fighting, now jammed with two thousand cots and a mess of angry, exhausted people being patrolled by edgy National Guard soldiers just back from Iraq.

The news racing around the shelter that day was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldnt do it, but God did. All that week the Louisiana State Legislature in Baton Rouge had been crawling with corporate lobbyists helping to lock in those big opportunities: lower taxes, fewer regulations, cheaper workers and a smaller, safer citywhich in practice meant plans to level the public housing projects and replace them with condos. Hearing all the talk of fresh starts and clean sheets, you could almost forget the toxic stew of rubble, chemical outflows and human remains just a few miles down the highway.

Over at the shelter, Jamar could think of nothing else. I really dont see it as cleaning up the city. What I see is that a lot of people got killed uptown. People who shouldnt have died.

He was speaking quietly, but an older man in line in front of us overheard and whipped around. What is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge? This isnt an opportunity. Its a goddamned tragedy. Are they blind?

A mother with two kids chimed in. No, theyre not blind, theyre evil. They see just fine.

One of those who saw opportunity in the floodwaters of New Orleans was Milton Friedman, grand guru of the movement for unfettered capitalism and the man credited with writing the rulebook for the contemporary, hypermobile global economy. Ninety-three years old and in failing health, Uncle Miltie, as he was known to his followers, nonetheless found the strength to write an op-ed for The Wall Street Journal three months after the levees broke. Most New Orleans schools are in ruins, Friedman observed, as are the homes of the children who have attended them. The children are

Friedmans radical idea was that instead of spending a portion of the billions of dollars in reconstruction money on rebuilding and improving New Orleans existing public school system, the government should provide families with vouchers, which they could spend at private institutions, many run at a profit, that would be subsidized by the state. It was crucial, Friedman wrote, that this fundamental change not be a stopgap but rather a permanent reform.