Soc. 403
May, 8, 2012
Shock Doctrine Through history wars and natural disasters have been part of the adversities humanity has suffered. Mankind has managed to get ahead with theses adversities but it becomes hard to believe where blood, and pain takes place others can get benefits from death. Where some fight for a better equal society others are expecting to spend a disgrace to make money from it. In the book “The Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klein, critiques how free market is dominating the world through the exploitation of disaster-shocked people and countries. America has become a corporatist state using the element of shock treatment among citizens. The term “disaster capitalism” first pointed out in the book by economist Milton Friedman claims that “whenever government have imposed sweeping free-market programs, the all-at-once shock treatment or shock therapy has been the method of choice” (8). Friedman observed only a crisis actual or perceived produces real change and the new fundamental change was a permanent reform. The reason is simple capitalism has always needed disasters to advance and the prefer method to achieve goals from corporations utilizing a collective trauma engage in radical social and economic engineering.

The shock therapy has helped America to become a corporative state where free market makes everything, it is the ultimate goal but hand with hand privatizing is what leads to corporations to a better success without of these disasters capitalism is not possible. Neoliberalism or globalization commonly named free trade is the way for the richer to get rich to expand their boundaries with other countries and get the biggest profit they could obtain. The corporations which main characteristic is huge transfer of public wealth to private hands or small group of people has the control. Every time a disaster happen these people gets money out of it and the poor get poorer, this is the new way upper classes operate. Shock treatment is hard to create but it is effective and profitable, once the people receive the “treatment” is to manipulate because they are in atmosphere of fear and shock that’s when they quickly make movements with permanent reforms. “As CEO of the international drug and chemical company Searle Pharmaceuticals, he used his political connections to secure the controversial and extraordinarily lucrative Food and Drug Administration (FDA) approval for aspartame (marketed as NutraSweet); and when Rumsfeld brokered the deal to sell Searle to Monsanto, he personally earned an estimated $12 million” (365).

Another important fact for shock therapy lies on torture. CIA uses torture as a way to put prisoners in a complete disorientation in order to make concessions against their will. CIA says the way break resistant sources is creating ruptures between the prisoners and their ability to make sense of the world around them, in this way they ensure the target they want to achieve. But not only the CIA is the only agency who protects the nation, another is Counterintelligence Field Activity (CIFA), a new intelligence agency created under Rumsfeld that is independent of the CIA. This parallel spy agency outsources 70 percent of its budget to private contractors, like the Department of Homeland Security, it was built as a hollow shell. As Ken Minihan, former director of the National Security Agency, explained, "Homeland security is too important to be left to the government" (380).

On the other hand is the middle and lower classes that don’t get anything from privatizations and corporations. They’re only used to approve the government’s decision, supposing a mutual agreement and consent from citizens while they are in shock. Ali Abdul-Amir Allawi interim trade minister said “There have been enough shock to the system, so we don’t need this shock therapy in the economy” (9). Ali realized that people even there in Iraq don’t want the treatment because they won’t obtain what the think they deserve. Immediately following September 11, the Bush Administration quietly out-sources the running of the “War on Terror” to Halliburton and Blackwater. After a tsunami wipes out the coasts of Southeast Asia, the pristine beaches are auctioned off to tourist resorts. New Orleans’s residents, scattered from Hurricane Katrina, discover that their public housing, hospitals and schools will never be reopened and schools became charter schools. These events are examples of “the shock doctrine” using the public’s disorientation following massive collective shocks wars, terrorist attacks, or natural disasters to achieve control by imposing economic shock therapy. Sometimes, when the first two shocks don’t succeed in wiping out resistance, a third shock is employed, the electrode in the prison cell or the Taser gun on the streets.

September 11 was a day that will remain in U.S history forever, for many of us it represents the day terrorism knocked down our nation but also the day we rose up and fought back stronger than ever. But for a certain group meant only one thing military privatization, elimination of public sphere, total liberation for corporations and skeletal social spending. “Now wars and disasters responses are so fully privatized that they are themselves the new market” (16). Through all its various name changes, the War on Terror, the war on radical Islam, the war against Islamofascism, the Third World War, the long war, the generational war the basic shape of the conflict has remained unchanged. People said September 11 was a day that changed the nation but scholars disagree saying that the only thing that changed was the ease with which they could pursue their ambitious agenda.

Since then, U.S military is now one of the fastest growing service economies in the world which involvement from corporations is to pay for with public money making presence on every level of this global war. In just a few years “the homeland security industry, which barely existed before 9/11, has exploded to a size that is now significantly larger than either Hollywood or the music business” (388), not enough with the increase on size, one of the first booms was “surveillance cameras, 4.2 million of which have been installed in Britain, one for every fourteen people, and 30 million in the U.S.” (381). The homeland security as the military became stronger during Bush regime showing disaster capitalism covering the privatization that sells the idea government cares about citizens. Although the stated goal was fighting terrorism, the effect was the creation of the disaster capitalism complex a full fledged new economy in homeland security, privatized war and disaster reconstruction tasked with nothing less than building and running a privatized security state, both at home and abroad.

At the beginning of terrorist attacks September 11, many thought combating terrorism was the primary goal of the government, Bush claimed that if we didn’t go fight and captured the enemy Osama Bin Laden, the possibilities of other terrorist attack would be present. But it turns out that September 11 was the perfect scenario for the Bush’s Administration to made private contracts. By the time the Bush team took office, the privatization mania of the eighties and nineties had successfully sold off or outsourced the large, publicly owned companies in several sectors, from water and electricity to highway management and garbage collection. The secretary of state Sr, Cheney scaled down the number of active troops and dramatically increased reliance on private contractors (361). He saw no reason why war shouldn't be a thriving part of America's highly profitable service economy invasion. The central tenet of the Bush regime relied on that the job of government is not to govern but to subcontract the task to the more efficient and generally superior private sector. After the invasion of Iraq the people were glad but as the time passed by and no results were coming, complains on war arrived, Bush was struggling with dissatisfied citizens; the economy staggered but on the other hand the longer a war is the more profit you get, this was convenient to corporations. In one final statement George H. W. Bush in response to an accusation that his son invaded Iraq to open up new markets for U.S. companies responded “I think that's weird and it's nuts. To suggest that everything we do is because we're hungry for money. I think that's crazy. I think you need to go back to school” (389). The Iraq war brought crisis to U.S finances, Bush became the most unpopular president in history and his administration showed us the new way of making business through “disaster capitalism” where only a few win and control but the rest remain the same dealing with the hostile consequences.