Friday, December 14, 2007

Economic Shock

I started reading the Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein this month. I have to say it's a huge improvement in her work. Not that her other books were not good, this just seems more researched and has a solid thesis. The main point being that when a country is hardest hit, the regions' politics turned on its head, a new economic policy is put into place. One that rips out old social programs, privatizes a country's wealth, and basically guts the country's economy creating a chasm between classes. And sometimes a country's political structure is ripped apart just to implement these plans. Klein brilliantly points out that people need to connect the dots. The Dirty War in Argentina was looked at as a horrible human rights atrocity but it was never put into perspective. The repression in South America in countries like Chile and more currently, but to a lesser extent, Bolivia was never fully understood by the rest of the world.

It's even harder to believe that these incidents just spontaneously happened. The University of Chicago, the incredibly conservative Economic department that housed the likes of Milton Friedman, sponsored programs to bring students from left leaning countries to the Chicago School to study their brand of economics. In Chile after the coup many of these students were advisers to Pinochet. This was of course covertly stopping international Marxism.

Which brings us to the subject of torture. During the 1950's the CIA experimented with sensory deprivation, drugs, and torturous activities to see if subjects could be brainwashed. "A clean slate," as Klein put it. On a larger scale this is exactly what has been done in places like Argentina, Chile, Bolivia, and the list goes on. Beat a nation into submission, rape their resources, and make a public spectacle of anyone who resists.


*Interesting fact- the definition of genocide "a group exterminated based on race, religion, or ethnicity" originally included "political" but was ultimately struck down before it was approved by the United Nations.