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Re: Fw: The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans

The wonder of paranoid thinking as manifested in conspiracy theories is how it subsumes all facts into its twisted view of the world. Is NCLB spending more money on the public schools and encouraging states to spend more money on their public schools? Sure, because it's a plot to privatize the schools. Before Katrina the Big Easy had one of the most inefficient and corrupt systems of public education in the nation. How much of that do you really want to re-create post-Katrina? Why not try radically different ways of doing things? Is a plot to privatize the NO schools really the only explanation for what's happening in NO?

I am a hard sell on the argument that God, in allowing natural disasters, has become a co--conspirator in efforts to limit government. Somehow I missed that in Paradise Lost, but if it's true, it's one hell of a plot.

I have not read Saltman or Klein, but it's almost as if they, or you, feel that somehow the "public sector" should be the default for everything that goes on in American life and that the "private sector" should count itself lucky to exist on the leavings. This seems to me to stand American philosophy of government, if not American history, on its head.

Lastly, Federal budge expenditures are approximately 20% of GDP, and when you throw in spending by state and local government, it's pretty hard to argue that the public sector is not getting its fair share of the American pie.

Art

-----Original Message-----
From: GERALD BRACEY <gbracey1@verizon.net>
To: LiteracyForAll@yahoogroups.com; arn-l@interversity.org
Sent: Sat, 22 Dec 2007 5:50 pm
Subject: [arn-l] Fw: The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans


Ken Saltman's "Schooling and the Politics of Disaster" appeared a little
ahead of Klein's disaster capitalism book, The Shock Doctrine, but the
message is the same: Disaster Capitalism uses natural or man made disasters
to dislodge the functions of the public sector and transfer them to the
private sector.


It's all part of the plan, Art.


Jerry


----- Original Message -----
From: <moderator@PORTSIDE.ORG>

To: <PORTSIDE@LISTS.PORTSIDE.ORG>

Sent: Saturday, December 22, 2007 4:48 PM

Subject: The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans




http://www.huffingtonpost.com/naomi-klein/the-shock-doctrine-in-act_b_77886.html

Huffington Post

December 1, 2007



The Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans



By Naomi Klein



Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most

shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the

attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New

Orleans to close down that city's public housing

projects, some of the only affordable units in the

city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood

damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that

make for perfect condo developments and hotels.



The final showdown over New Orleans public housing is

playing out in dramatic fashion right now. The conflict

is a classic example of the 'triple shock' formula at

the core of the doctrine.



* First came the shock of the original disaster:

the flood and the traumatic evacuation.



* Next came the 'economic shock therapy': using the

window of opportunity opened up by the first shock

to push through a rapid-fire attack on the city's

public services and spaces, most notably it's

homes, schools and hospitals.



* Now we see that as residents of New Orleans try

to resist these attacks, they are being met with a

third shock: the shock of the police baton and the

Taser gun, used on the bodies of protestors outside

New Orleans City Hall yesterday.



Democracy Now! has been covering this fight all week,

with amazing reports from filmmakers Jacquie Soohen and

Rick Rowley (Rick was arrested in the crackdown). Watch

residents react to the bulldozing of their homes here:

http://tinyurl.com/29vnl7



And footage from yesterday's police crackdown and

Tasering of protestors inside and outside city hall

here:http://tinyurl.com/yo3s8t



That last segment contains a terrific interview with

Kali Akuno, executive director of the People's

Hurricane Relief Fund. Akuno puts the demolitions in

the big picture, telling Amy Goodman:



This is just one particular piece of this whole

program. Public hospitals are also being shut down

and set to be demolished and destroyed in New

Orleans. And they've systematically dismantled the

public education system and beginning demolition on

many of the schools in New Orleansâ?"that's on the

agenda right nowâ?"and trying to totally turn that

system over to a charter and a voucher system, to

privatize and just really go forward with a major

experiment, which was initially laid out by the

Heritage Foundation and other neoconservative think

tanks shortly after the storm. So this is just

really the fulfillment of this program.



Akuno is referring to the Heritage Foundation's

infamous post-Katrina meeting with the Republican Study

Group in which participants laid out their plans to

turn New Orleans into a Petri dish for every policy

they can't ram through without a disaster. Read the

minutes on my website.



For more context, here are couple of related excerpts

from The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster

Capitalism:



The news racing around the shelter [in Baton Rouge]

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 couldn't do it, but God

did.' Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans'

wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar

sentiment: 'I think we have a clean sheet to start

again. And with that clean sheet we have some very

big opportunities.' 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 city'â?"which

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 Perry, a young resident

of New Orleans, could think of nothing else. 'I

really don't see it as cleaning up the city. What I

see is that a lot of people got killed uptown.

People who shouldn't have died.' He was speaking

quietly, but an older man in line in front of us in

the food line overheard and whipped around. 'What

is wrong with these people in Baton Rouge? This

isn't an opportunity. It's a goddamned tragedy. Are

they blind?'



A mother with two kids chimed in. 'No, they're not

blind, they're evil. They see just fine.'



At first I thought the Green Zone phenomenon was

unique to the war in Iraq. Now, after years spent

in other disaster zones, I realize that the Green

Zone emerges everywhere that the disaster

capitalism complex descends, with the same stark

partitions between the included and the excluded,

the protected and the damned.



It happened in New Orleans. After the flood, an

already divided city turned into a battleground

between gated green zones and raging red zones-the

result not of water damage but of the 'free-market

solutions' embraced by the president. The Bush

administration refused to allow emergency funds to

pay public sector salaries, and the City of New

Orleans, which lost its tax base, had to fire three

thousand workers in the months after Katrina. Among

them were sixteen of the city's planning staff-with

shades of 'de Baathification,' laid off at the

precise moment when New Orleans was in desperate

need of planners. Instead, millions of public

dollars went to outside consultants, many of whom

were powerful real estate developers. And of course

thousands of teachers were also fired, paving the

way for the conversion of dozens of public schools

into charter schools, just as Friedman had called

for.



Almost two years after the storm, Charity Hospital

was still closed. The court system was barely

functioning, and the privatized electricity

company, Entergy, had failed to get the whole city

back online. After threatening to raise rates

dramatically, the company managed to extract a

controversial $200 million bailout from the federal

government. The public transit system was gutted

and lost almost half its workers. The vast majority

of publicly owned housing projects stood boarded up

and empty, with five thousand units slotted for

demolition by the federal housing authority. Much

as the tourism lobby in Asia had longed to be rid

of the beachfront fishing villages, New Orleans'

powerful tourism lobby had been eyeing the housing

projects, several of them on prime land close to

the French Quarter, the city's tourism magnet.



Endesha Juakali helped set up a protest camp

outside one of the boarded-up projects, St. Bernard

Public Housing, explaining that 'they've had an

agenda for St. Bernard a long time, but as long as

people lived here, they couldn't do it. So they

used the disaster as a way of cleansing the

neighbourhood when the neighbourhood is weakest...

This is a great location for bigger houses and

condos. The only problem is you got all these poor

black people sitting on it!'



Amid the schools, the homes, the hospitals, the

transit system and the lack of clean water in many

parts of town, New Orleans' public sphere was not

being rebuilt, it was being erased, with the storm

used as the excuse. At an earlier stage of

capitalist 'creative destruction,' large swaths of

the United States lost their manufacturing bases

and degenerated into rust belts of shuttered

factories and neglected neighbourhoods. Post-

Katrina New Orleans may be providing the first

Western-world image of a new kind of wasted urban

landscape: the mould belt, destroyed by the deadly

combination of weathered public infrastructure and

extreme weather.



Since the publication of The Shock Doctrine, my

research team has been putting dozens of original

source documents online for readers to explore subjects

in greater depth. The resource page on New Orleans has

some real gems.

______



Naomi Klein is the author of many books, including her

most recent, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster

Capitalism, which will be published in September.Visit

Naomi's website at www.naomiklein.org, or to learn more

about her new book, visit www.shockdoctrine.com .



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