Amy Goodman interviews Naomi Klein, the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism

Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism

Extract:

So, we know that the crisis is coming, and the question is, how are we going to respond? I think there needs to be better ideas lying around. I think the Milton Friedman Institute is about keeping the same old ideas that have been recycled so many times, that actually make these public crises worse, making sure that they are the ones that are ready and available whenever the next crisis hits. I think that is what—at its core, that’s what so many of the right-wing think tanks are for, and that’s what the Institute is for. And I think that is a waste of the fine minds at this university. I think it is a waste of your minds, your creativity, because all of these crises—climate change, the casino that is contemporary capitalism—all of these crises do demand answers, do demand actions. They are messages, telling us that the system is broken. And instead of actual solutions, we’re throwing ideology, very profitable ideology, at these problems. So we need better ideas lying around.

We need better ideas responding to what a Barack Obama presidency would absolutely face. As soon as he comes to office, “Yes, you can” turns into “No, you can’t; we’re broke.” No green jobs, no alternative energy, no healthcare for everyone. You know, his plan for—to give healthcare to every child in America costs $80 billion. Bailing out AIG cost $85 billion. They’re spending that money. They’re spending those promises. So, the people who are going to say, “No, you can’t,” who are going to use this crisis to shut down hope, to shut down possibility, are ready.

Link

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

What's the Matter With Cultural Studies?

A timely article, a semi-obituary. . . But I still have hope that the history of cultural studies might matter to the university—and to the world beyond it. My hopes aren't quite as ambitious as they were 20 years ago. I no longer expect cultural studies to transform the disciplines. But I do think cultural studies can do a better job of complicating the political-economy model in media theory, a better job of complicating our accounts of neoliberalism, and a better job of convincing people inside and outside the university that cultural studies' understanding of hegemony is a form of understanding with great explanatory power—that is to say, a form of understanding that actually works. Link: http://chronicle.com/article/Whats-the-Matter-With/48334/
Read more

Remembering Maninder Singh Kang

Image
(18.5.1963-4.2.2013) By Rajesh Sharma I visualize him watching his own burning corpse and laughing a philosopher’s laughter. “Oye pandatā , this Kang was a dog’s tail of a man. Look, he is poking even the flames to laugh. What a struggle the wind and the fire are waging over his body. And look at the rain, it refuses to stop. His death seems to have released an excess of the five bhoots , making nature go berserk.”                 Listening to him, I try to make sense of his bizarre inner geography.                 “He’ll be impossible to replace. It’s such a loss,” he adds in an altogether different mood.       Maninder had this ability to move effortlessly between gaiety and gravity. He probably had found the thread that connects the extremes.                 I met him some twenty years ago when he arrived to teach in the college where I was already teaching. That college, in Hoshiarpur, had then a Principal who liked to take himself very seriously. And he
Read more

You don't know (A poem by Pash)

  Translated from Punjabi by Rajesh Sharma you don ’ t know how I ’ m counted in poetry: like some carcass-eating dog that has strayed into a full-blown mujra   perhaps you wonder what I write late into the nights in the light of a lamp for some party engaged in dangerous things   you don ’ t know how I go to poetry: like a rustic woman in new clothes of outworn fashion who steps, bewildered, into city shops   I ask of poetry nail polish for you coloured embroidery thread for my younger sister bitter medicine to treat father ’ s cataract   poetry sees mischief in such demands   every month night after night it sends for me its sentinels carrying batons of cane and guns with polished butts they take away my beloved books my childhood picture from the shelf and my first love ’ s cry that slipped on the stairs and, hurt, was broken into a disconsolate rainbow   you don ’ t know that the policemen who know me
Read more