Naomi Klein isn’t wearing rose-colored glasses
And she’s advising the American people also to avoid seeing things through a naively pink glow, especially now. The widely-praised writer of The Shock Doctrine — a book that reveals how the rich and powerful exploit natural and manmade disasters for profit — is warning that the ongoing Wall Street meltdown is a demonstration of more of this ruthless greed in action.
From her blog yesterday: (“Now is the Time to Resist Wall Street’s Shock Doctrine” Sept 22, 2008):
I wrote “The Shock Doctrine” in the hopes that it would make us all better prepared for the next big shock. Well, that shock has certainly arrived, along with gloves-off attempts to use it to push through radical pro-corporate policies (which of course will further enrich the very players who created the market crisis in the first place…
Summing up the current highway robbery scenario now being staged in the U.S. Congress, Klein warns that there are no saviors who are going to look out for us in this crisis. Certainly not Henry Paulson, former CEO of Goldman Sachs, one of the companies that will benefit most from his proposed bailout (which is actually a stick up). Loud, organized grassroots pressure on both political parties is our only hope, she says.
Here is a video of Klein last week on the popular political affairs talk show Real Time with Bill Maher, debating the current crisis.
