are a long time ago. And I don't know that it's what "society" wants, it's what the elites want.

listening to the interview with Klein from CBC on informationclearinghouse.info makes clear that the point is accomplishing what "society" doesn't want.

any more than pictures of failed 19th-century flying machines are counterexamples to today's aviation.

It's just what stuff looked like before they got it right.

but when I tally up my natural disasters, much of the time, the government is too disordered to do anything. Bangladesh floods, Tangshan earthquakes, Florida after the Andrew, the pair of the 1926 and 1928 hurricanes, Chernobyl, the major earthquakes in western asia in the last 20 years, Hurricane Iniki, the 1987 or 1994 quake...man, I'm just not coming up with them. Why don't you suggest some natural disasters? About the only one I'm coming up with that were remotely successfully taken advantage of was the Irish Potato Famine, Dust Bowl (and not that much), and the great Kanto quake (and that was more populace ethnically cleaning out koreans and liberals).

It's not natural disasters. It's social disasters, like race riots and holocausts, and things like those that were incited, for the most part that are successful. The Watts or Detroit riots mostly resulted in nonutility for the elites, for example. The race riots and strike breaking around the turn of the century *did* free up property for whites to use, as well as the transfer of west coast property from japanese to whites during WWII.

For the Shock Doctrine, to me, to be valid, the author is going to have to say that 911 was a MIHOP. In order for a successful grab, it must be anticipated. Opportunistic property captures in circumstances without a lot of control tends to fail...

best evidence, for exmaple, is that the Reichstag fire was not set by the Nazis. But they sure took advantage of it.

And, um, the book and article suggest two - the Asian Tsunami and Katrina.

It's not an inevitable rule - when a natural disaster happens it will ALWAYS be used for shock purposes - neither Klein, nor I in my summary of Klein, suggested that. In fact, as I noted, shock can be used for good purposes (FDR), and, of course, as you point out, you can simply do nothing much. But disasters do offer an opportunity to reorder things, and often enough that opportunity has been taken that we should be aware of the possibility, and indeed the pattern of strongly activist conservative regimes to use them for such purposes.

The Reichstag fire isn't exactly a huge disaster. One might as well say the Kennedy assasination was a huge natural/manmade disaster. Of course it could be considered that way, but I think when we go that far, we're approaching trivial answers.

And yes, I thought about the Asian Tsunami. I dismissed it as too new and yes, I would bust naomi klein's ovaries for it. Most such remakings take *real* time (5+ years), which is why it fails all the time when attempted opportunistically. One really does have to plan things out. Sri Lanka is a horrible example because it's still effectly in a state of civil war with one of the most effective guerilla/terrorist groups in the world. Also, the plan to move out people for tourist bonhomie fails more often than not, preceding disaster or not.

I do agree with you about activist conservatism. We don't need the attempt and failure anymore than we need the attempt and success.

But then, if you were a minority group, this would go without saying. It happens to black/hispanics/asians all the friggin' time in the US.

seemed pretty deliberate to me. In fact I predicted, just days after it, that it would be used as an opportunity to seize land for decelopers and force out poor people. Which, in the case of NO and the US, of course, meant mostly black people.

It's pretty much played out as expected except that it's become clear that even when there isn't a lot of money to be made they'll still force out poor blacks for the sheer pleasure of pushing them around.

Disasters and opportunistic taking advantage of which plays out over a course of years. We don't know yet how Katrina will turn out in the long course of things. It is relatively easy to say that someone will take advantage of the situation to move out unwanted people when a disaster happens, as that is trivially true, due to the nature of politics.

the blood and treasure guy really has it in for Klein...

http://bloodandtreasure.typepad.com/blood_treasure/2007/09/get-murray-roth.html#comments

I just don't agree. We do know how Katrina was taken advantage of. We haven't seen it play out to the bitter end, but the pattern and intentions are clear enough. And we sure as hell know how 9/11 was taken advantage of.

http://agonist.org/node/45673

to every topic now, horsie?

_{Turn back to the Constitution - and READ it.}