Democracy Now: Naomi Klein on Anti-Union Bills and Shock Doctrine

By Democracy Now

Watch the video here.

Naomi Klein on Anti-Union Bills and Shock Doctrine American-Style: “This is a Frontal Assault on Democracy, It’s a Kind of a Corporate Coup D’Etat”

“Obama is also involved in attacking labor rights with his pushing of charter schools and draconian budget cuts. He’s not a good bad guy for progressives. So, we’re still in a situation where Obama is getting away with, in my opinion, shock doctrine-style tactics, because people don’t—still don’t want to believe that Obama is doing it, too.”

As a wave of anti-union bills are introduced across the country following the wake of Wall Street financial crisis, many analysts are picking up on the theory that award-winning journalist and author Naomi Klein first argued in her 2007 bestselling book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. In the book, she reveals how those in power use times of crisis to push through undemocratic and extreme free market economic policies. “The Wisconsin protests are an incredible example of how to resist the shock doctrine,” Klein says.

Dark Mountain Project to issue second book

By Dougald Hine and Paul Kingsnorth
Dark Mountain Project

We are the initiators of the Dark Mountain Project. Last year, with your help, we raised $6,140 to cover the publishing costs of Dark Mountain: Issue 1, our first book-length collection of essays, stories, poetry, conversations and art for living through times of global disruption.

A year later, we are in the final stages of putting together Issue 2. Once again, it will be a hardback book of around 250 pages, with contributions from writers ranging from familiar names to those appearing in print for the first time.

Entire February 2010 Issue of American Behavioral Scientist Devoted to State Crimes Against Democracy: The Case of September 11, 2001

By Elizabeth Woodworth

For 50 years the American Behavioral Scientist has been a leading source of behavioral research for the academic world. Its influence is shown by the fact that it is indexed by an extraordinary 67 major database services, causing its papers to be widely exposed on the international scene.

We Don’t Feel Like Celebrating with Israel This Year

By Naomi Klein

When I heard the Toronto International Film Festival was holding a celebratory “spotlight” on Tel Aviv I felt ashamed of my city.

Capitalism, Sarah Palin-style

By Naomi Klein

We are in a progressive moment, a moment when the ground is shifting beneath our feet, and anything is possible. Do we want to save that pre-crisis system, get it back to where it was last September? Or do we want to use this crisis, and the electoral mandate for serious change delivered by the last election, to radically transform that system? We need to get clear on our answer now because we haven’t had the potent combination of a serious crisis and a clear progressive democratic mandate for change since the 1930s. We use this opportunity, or we lose it.