10.06.07
Shock Doctrine/Canada
From Rad-Green
The other Klein has a vision –and it’s not pretty;
Author’s unsettling book has resonance in Alberta
Naomi Klein has a superb sense of timing. Her first book, No Logo:
Taking Aim at the Brand Bullies, was at the printers as the 1999 anti-
globalization protests erupted at the World Trade Organization
negotiations in Seattle.She arrives in Alberta this week with an ambitious and unsettling new
book about the policies and human effects of market fundamentalism,
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, just as the long-
term effects of another Klein’s policies of deregulation,
privatization and strategic destruction of the public sphere are
front-page news in Edmonton.Albertans are losing at least $2 billion a year in energy royalties.
The province has a $6-billion infrastructure debt and a profound
social and cultural debt. Cabinet ministers and senior bureaucrats
have either ignored, misrepresented or dismissed reports that would
have changed royalty rates years as early as 2000. We pay the highest
electricity rates in Canada. Real wages have declined since the
recession of 1992. The boom, which once seemed exciting and sexy, is
being exposed as a social, environmental and moral disaster —
orchestrated with the collusion of the Government of Alberta. These
are facts, not ideological attacks.Klein addressed a sold-out crowd of 400 Tuesday night at the Royal
Alberta Museum, after addressing another sold-out crowd in Calgary on
Monday. “These issues are much less abstract here,” she said over a
cup of tea in the Hotel Macdonald on Wednesday morning. “The
connection between disaster capitalism and big oil here is so direct,
so obvious. This boom, which is a part of everyone’s life in this
province, is intricately linked to the spiralling chaos around the
world — which assures oil prices remain high. Audiences in Alberta
are the most engaged, most informed, most serious audiences in
Canada. At a university event in Toronto, you’re getting your
politics confirmed. Here, disaster capitalism is a part of your daily
lives.”The Shock Doctrine outlines the theories and principles of Milton
Friedman and his “Chicago School” of economists, who advocated for an
absolutely pure free market. Public health care, education, pensions,
employment insurance, utilities and other fundamentals of the social-
welfare state were distortions, and unreasonably supported by deluded
citizens. In order to radically privatize the public sphere, Friedman
suggested economic “shock therapy.” The first successful trial was in
Chile, where Augusto Pinochet overwhelmed resistance to an
unrestricted free market with murder, torture and intimidation.Shock therapy is the guiding metaphor of this strategy, which Klein
describes at work in post 9/11 America, most notably in the aftermath
of hurricane Katrina in New Orleans — where the fear and uncertainty
of a disaster overwhelms democratic institutions and allows for
comprehensive privatization. In The Shock Doctrine, she outlines how
the corporate takeover of the public trust is being accomplished
today in Iraq, in Indonesia, in Poland, in China and in Russia —
where “disaster capitalists” such as Halliburton, Blackwater and
Bechtel are quietly making billions of dollars.Of course, Alberta has never been shocked by a disaster. But on
Tuesday night, Klein and Ricardo Acuna, executive director of the
Parkland Institute, argued that the so-called debt crisis of the
1990s created a similar atmosphere, allowing the Conservative
government to “get out of business,” to privatize and deregulate, to
step aside and allow the corporate sector to determine the province’s
future.“The swagger has gone from these ideologies,” she said.
“It’s a moment of genuine struggle here, of real curiosity. It’s a
complicated moment, where people are interested in alternative
viewpoints. They see the waste, they see the lost opportunities. And,
I think, there are very ambivalent feelings about where the boom is
coming from. It’s not the happy-go-lucky atmosphere of the dot-com
boom. There’s this glimpse into the future that the boom provides, an
apocalyptic vision.”At the end of her presentation on Tuesday night, Klein suggested
Albertans — who own their natural resources — should not settle for
the modestly higher rates proposed by the royalty review panel.“Take the lead of (Bolivian president) Evo Morales,” she said,
cheekily, of the new least-popular Latin-American leader in
Washington and, presumably, the University of Chicago department of
economics. In Bolivia, Morales switched royalty regimes so that
private companies only received 18 per cent of the value of
production in the two largest gas fields.The energy companies initially said they were going to leave the
country, to stop investing, an argument with strong parallels in
Edmonton and Calgary today. “Then they just didn’t leave,” Klein
said, smiling. “They decided to stay after all.”