Naomi Klein: Change Everything or Face A Global Katrina

[IDemo]

http://www.commondreams.org/views/2015/08/30/change-everything-or-face-global-katrina

For me, the road to This Changes Everything: Capitalism vs. the Climate begins in a very specific time and place. The time was exactly ten years ago. The place was New Orleans, in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. The road in question was flooded and littered with bodies.

Today I am posting, for the first time, the entire section on Hurricane Katrina from my last book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Rereading the chapter 10 years after the events transpired, I am struck most by this fact: the same military equipment and contractors used against New Orleans’ Black residents have since been used to militarize police across the United States, contributing to the epidemic of murders of unarmed Black men and women. That is one way in which the Disaster Capitalism Complex perpetuates itself and protects its lucrative market.

Looking ahead to coming disasters, ecological and political, we often assume that we are all going to face them together, that what’s needed are leaders who recognize the destructive course we are on. But I’m not so sure. Perhaps part of the reason why so many of our elites, both political and corporate, are so sanguine about climate change is that they are confident they will be able to buy their way out of the worst of it. This may also partially explain why so many Bush supporters are Christian end-timers. It’s not just that they need to believe there is an escape hatch from the world they are creating. It’s that the Rapture is a parable for what they are building down here—a system that invites destruction and disaster, then swoops in with private helicopters and airlifts them and their friends to divine safety.

[Octafish]

1. FEMA cares...

...for both of its major constituencies: money and power.

Then there was the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), a laboratory for the Bush administration’s vision of government run by corporations. In the summer of 2004, more than a year before Katrina hit, the State of Louisiana put in a request to FEMA for funds to develop an in-depth contingency plan for a powerful hurricane. The request was refused. “Disaster mitigation”— advance government measures to make the effects of disasters less devastating—was one of the programs gutted under Bush. Yet that same summer FEMA awarded a $500,000 contract to a private firm called Innovative Emergency Management. Its task was to come up with a “catastrophic hurricane disaster plan for Southeast Louisiana and the City of New Orleans.”

So long as that's clear, the 99-percent can fend for themselves from here out.

[ruffburr]

2. I'm having-

A hard time reading " This Changes everything" while I've understood that the Climate is being screwed since the 70's I didn't really understand the depth of the corporate political ties too the destruction of the planet, With each chapter so far I get a queasy feeling in my gut from the anger at this scam, This whole system has to change now not tomorrow, The only hope I see is Bernie, We cannot afford the Status Quo.

[arcane1]

8. One of the beauties of the title, for it changes everything even on the inside

[hifiguy]

11. I believe that Bernie is the last train out of Dodge

before the million-pound shithammer comes down.

[Dustlawyer]

3. Bernie is the only hope we currently have to try to mitigate the damage and get our country back to

a Democracy. If we don't get the money out of politics, bust up the Wall Street banks and the media oligopolies, we can never stop and reverse climate change in time. It will take millions of motivated Americans to answer Bernie's call and pressure the rest of the corrupt politicians and media into doing what we need them to do to save our country and our world.

[Marty McGraw]

4. precisely my sentiment as well

Your paragraph, alone, deserves it's own segment on DU

[tex-wyo-dem]

5. Yep...+1000!

Getting Bernie in the WH is just a small (but very significant) part of the work that needs to be done by the people. The House and Senate obstruction needs to end by electing progressives who will support Bernie's initiatives. The corrupt media needs to be totally revamped to report on the real and serious issues facing everyone, not just in this country, but on the planet. The stranglehold that big energy, big Ag, big banks, etc. etc have on our government needs to end now.

And this is just scratching the surface.

[ymetca]

6. While I will support Bernie if he is the nominee

it is very unlikely, if he were then to go on to become President, that he can accomplish much. A global problem requires a global solution, and unfortunately we have no global governance. In fact, the Ye Olde Nation-state models appear to be trending toward more myopia and nativism. What could be more atavistic than the rise of ISIS? The cult of flag-waving nationalism is so deeply embedded into our collective psyches that not even WWII could undo the mass delusion that such a thing as a "country" exists, and that political borders are real, despite the fact that we are constantly redrawing them.

We need a global Direct Democracy, wherein every planet-dweller is an equal citizen with full voting rights over policies, not so-called "representatives", whom have never really represented anyone but those who pay them the most. We have the means to create such a system of global governance, but I very much doubt we can achieve it without first the United States collapsing, much as the Soviet Union did.

Perhaps this is the (unbeknownst to them) purpose of the current Neo-Conservative movements around the globe --an unconscious acknowledgement that the current system doesn't work, but without an understanding that the one thing they fear most --a One World Government-- is the only system that can even begin to address our problems.

Even unscrupulous spin-meisters like Henry Kissinger, who recently wrote a book entitled "The New World Order", have some inkling of what is necessary. But he, like all those in power, cannot conceive of a world not hierarchically controlled by a ruling elite. A Global Direct Democracy is no doubt completely unacceptable to such elites, and, of course, feeds right into the fears and fantasies of the religious end-timers.

Lately I have found myself wondering "can the world afford its first trillionaire?" I am thinking perhaps, but not for long...

My apologies for bloviating thus!

[ronnie624]

7. +1

No need to apologize. Your comments are quite insightful.

[AuntPatsy]

9. Sad K&R

[hifiguy]

10. Nobody is better at explaining the world as it

these days and why it is such a catastrophic mess, AND what can and should be done, than Naomi Klein.

NOBODY.