Disasterism As A Means Of Introducing Draconian Legislation

Cashing in on a crisis
Terence Corcoran
November 24 2008

QUOTE: "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before."

QUOTE: "Now is the time to confront the challenge of carbon emissions and climate change once and for all," said Mr. Obama last week. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer acceptable."

QUOTE: In an economic and financial meltdown, it's time to bring in those languishing policy ideas - radical labour reform, ratchet up government spending, nationalize industries, roll-out energy controls, re-regulate banking and industry, socialize health care, turn the economy over to the carbon police

QUOTE: It's apparently just fine to cash in on a crisis if the initiatives are the ones you want.

QUOTE: If socialism is defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production, America isn't there yet. But the Obama agenda, from health care to energy policy to the auto industry, is certainly built around the idea that government control of the means of production is the answer to America's economic and social ills.




"The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary." H. L Mencken

Obama and the rise of Disaster Socialism

As is now well known, Barack Obama's new Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, told a Wall Street Journal conference last week that, "You never want a serious crisis to go to waste." He added, his eye on the worsening financial environment, that "This crisis provides the opportunity for us to do things that you could not do before." President-elect Obama appears to be taking the crisis strategy to heart. Announcing his economic team yesterday, Mr. Obama spoke of an economic crisis of "historic proportions" that requires immediate response: "If we do not act swiftly and boldly, most experts believe we could lose millions of jobs next year."

The crisis mentality, the idea that disasters should be seized and used as springboards for the imposition of radical ideas, appears to be gaining favour in all circles.

In an economic and financial meltdown, it's time to bring in those languishing policy ideas - radical labour reform, ratchet up government spending, nationalize industries, roll-out energy controls, re-regulate banking and industry, socialize health care, turn the economy over to the carbon police. "Now is the time to confront the challenge of carbon emissions and climate change once and for all," said Mr. Obama last week. "Delay is no longer an option. Denial is no longer acceptable."

But wait a minute. Haven't we heard all this before?

Isn't cashing in on crisis supposed to have been George W. Bush's game, with the evil Dick Cheney at his side and propped up by the crisis-mongering cabal of capitalist free-market running dogs from the Chicago School, the Milton Friedmanites? Isn't this Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine actually being implemented - not by the right but by the left?

Looks like it to me, which is perhaps why we haven't heard too much criticism from the left on the emergence of Barack Obama as the world's leading practitioner of the art of disasterism. Ms. Klein reached hard to paint President Bush as a ruthless crisis monger. He invaded Iraq after 9/11 because it was something his administration's key advisors (and his father?) always wanted to do. The War on Terror was a pretext for privatization and security controls. Hurricane Katrina turned into a great opportunity to roll-back labour standards, close public housing and privatize schools in New Orleans. Free trade was foisted on Americans by politicians during economic turmoil.

All that was deplorable when the Bush administration seemed to be doing it, but it's OK on the left now when their man is talking about turning the current economic crisis into an open pit for every policy intervention sitting in the filing cabinets of liberal think-tanks and Democrats in Congress. It's apparently just fine to cash in on a crisis if the initiatives are the ones you want.

In the wildest reaches of her shock doctrine theories, Ms. Klein seemed to be saying that the capitalists almost deliberately created crises so that they could turn them into vehicles for market reforms, free trade and privatization. "The fundamentalist form of capitalism has always needed disasters to advance."

But the idea that capitalism creates its own disasters to advance its cause seems to fall apart in the wake of the current economic meltdown. The very strategy Ms. Klein pinned on the late Nobel economist Milton Friedman and capitalism turns out instead to be the modus operandi of the Obama interventionists. She said of Mr. Friedman, as the creator of the "disaster capitalism complex," that his aim was to overthrow the Keynesian policies and welfare structures that pushed government deeper and deeper into economic control. "Some people stockpile canned goods and water in preparation for major disasters; Friedmanites stockpile free-market ideas."

As it turns out, the Friedmanites warehouse of market ideas - privatization, deregulation, market forces - currently look to be no match for the massive underground Doctor No storehouse of liberal, leftist and socialist schemes being hauled to the surface by the Obamaites.

Americans don't like to have the word "socialism" attached to their governments; that's for lesser, backwater nations like Canada, France, Peru and the old Yugoslavia. The United States, as CNN likes to see it, is a capitalist country, even as its politicians rush to bring in a rash of Keynesian interventions and state controls.

If socialism is defined as a centrally planned economy in which the government controls all means of production, America isn't there yet. But the Obama agenda, from health care to energy policy to the auto industry, is certainly built around the idea that government control of the means of production is the answer to America's economic and social ills.

Even under President Bush, as the financial crisis deepened, little thought appears to have been given to the government's creeping nationalization of banks and the financial markets, which continued yesterday with the bailout of Citigroup. Mr. Bush speaks proudly of his dedication to free markets and capitalism, but he clearly - contrary to the nonsense claims of Ms. Klein - has never been in the business of promoting Friedmanite capitalism.

As we are now witnessing, Klein's disaster capitalist complex is a mythical creation, the shock doctrine of disaster capitalism an artificial construct. Disaster capitalism never got off the ground. From Russia to Canada to Europe and the United States under Franklin D. Roosevelt's New Deal, there isn't a country in the world that hasn't undergone the experience of a political takeover by the left on the wave of a crisis.

What is unfolding before us is a classic enactment of disaster socialism.


http://network.nationalpost.com/np/blogs/fpcomment/archive/2008/11/24/terence-corcoran-now-for-the-real-shock-doctrine.aspx




Warmest Regards

Bonzo

"bnzoo" wrote

Cashing in on a crisis
Terence Corcoran November 25, 2008

Bloodshed and Death is coming to American Businessmen
In my 46 years on this Earth, I have never had to write such a frightening Op-Ed piece as this. Sadly, the state of affairs inside the US and its business community is such that remaining silent is no longer an option.
Put bluntly, bloodshed and death is coming. Brutal, violent, merciless. Perpetrated with malice aforethought. If I am right, many of you business folks - especially the folks at the top - are going to be the ones doing the bleeding and the dying.
How we got to this point is simple. How we stop it from happening is not so simple; but there is still a small window of opportunity which may help avert this.
It began with NAFTA and GATT. The whole "free trade" movement was sales-pitched to us common folk as a way to break down trade barriers so American products could be sold overseas with greater ease and competitiveness. The pitch told us that it would help American companies and increase American jobs. That sales pitch was a deliberate lie.
What was really afoot was a way for American corporations to significantly reduce their manufacturing costs by opening state-of-the-art facilities in third world countries, hiring third-world workers at pittance pay with no benefits, while maintaining sales prices. This allowed you folks to pocket huge additional profits.
Next, you corporate folks decided to jump on the "Diversity" bandwagon, Diversity replaced merit. Corporate productivity slid but no one could dare step up to say why for fear of being fired as a racist.
Diversity became and end unto itself and ultimately it was the straight, white male who suffered most. Straight white males were intentionally passed-over for jobs and promotions. When "downsizing" took place, it was the straight, white male cut loose so "diversity" could be maintained.
The last straw - and by far the worst betrayal - was the intentional use of illegal aliens and the intentional importation of foreign, cheap labor under the H1-B Visa system. Companies even went so far as to send their Human Resources people to seminars offered by law firms so they could learn precisely how to disqualify Americans for available jobs, in favor of importing foreigners!
Well, ladies and gentlemen of the business community, the chickens have now come home to roost.
Vast numbers of unemployed Americans, unable to pay their mortgages after losing jobs, began defaulting, causing foreclosures to rise.
Vast numbers of illegal aliens who were also given mortgages (by banks who feared being labeled racists if they declined to lend), defaulted on their mortgages too. This caused even more foreclosures.
As foreclosures grew, they affected the value of nearby homes whose owners suddenly found out they owed more than their homes were worth! When their mortgage companies demanded large, lump sum payments to pay down the excess mortgage, those folks could not pay and. . . . were foreclosed upon.
Long story short, these foreclosures caused the banking system to contract, which caused the credit markets to dry up, which caused everything else to go in the crapper. That's where we are today.
Where we're heading is unlike anything you can imagine.
Unlike the great depression of the 1930's, people today are quite well educated. We know exactly how this trouble happened and exactly who is to blame: YOU. The corporate hot shots who put profit over country; who put greed above loyalty and who cared not one wit about who was displaced, who was harmed, or who got shafted.
Unlike the great depression, people today have lost a lot more than just their jobs and homes. They've lost their retirement nest eggs, their children's college funds and worst of all, any chance at a better future. Therein lies a recipe for violence;. and folks, violence is coming - right at you.
You see, folks of today understand that allowing the great depression of the 1930's to take place without retribution against those who caused it, set the stage for this latest financial screw job.
As any parent can tell you, when being nice over bad behavior fails to stop such behavior, one must resort to punishing bad behavior to prevent future bad acts.
Punishment for what you have done is your due and folks out here in the real world are preparing to deliver it - right to your physical person on the doorstep of your offices and homes.
Thanks to the internet, we know who the CEO's and CFO's of all your companies are. We know who is on every Board of Directors. Thanks to information services like Intellius.com, we also know where all of you live. ALL of you.
Americans who have lost everything, have no reservation whatsoever about coming after you to inflict violence for wrecking their lives and our nation. In fact, I personally know of a "movement" of several groups actively recruiting the destitute from make-shift homeless centers, with the intention of organizing criminal violence against you. Groups like the Ku Klux Klan, Aryan Nations, Nazis and White racist skinheads are seeing staggering growth in membership. I know. I've seen it with my own eyes. And you know what? I agree with "the movement" because I think what you've done stinks.
I will proudly stand with those groups when the time comes.
These groups are folks, right here in America, who have nothing left. They have lost everything, including all hope. They do not fear the police, jail or death. They certainly don't fear you.
More interesting, many of the people now facing utter destitution are US military veterans and they are helping the aforementioned groups prepare for what's coming. Through their contacts in the military, veterans in the groups mentioned above have gained access to automatic weapons, armor piercing ammunition, grenades, C4 plastic explosives, anti-personnel mines, rocket-propelled grenades and more!
I personally know one former US Army Combat Engineer in the National Alliance. I can't even begin to describe how helpful he has been to "the movement."
If you want an example of how frighteningly effective this movement has become, I can tell you for an absolute fact that the US Secret Service had to emergency-deploy eight (8) sniper teams around Grant Park in Chicago, IL on election night because a member of "the movement" was reportedly headed down there with military Mortars to attack and kill Barack Obama and his supporters! That's how bold, how brazen, how incredibly dangerous things are getting!
What good will the police or your corporate security forces be against these types of dedicated and committed, angry people? What good are the "safe rooms" you've built in your homes or office buildings when C4 and RPG's can blow right through them?
Last year, a listener to my talk radio show who is a gunsmith, thought I might like having an illegal silencer for my gun. He built one and shipped it to me! I have pictures to prove it!
Was it illegal? Yes. Did he care? No. Did I care? I won't say.
You have no idea how bad things are getting out here in real America. Trust me, if you don't do something now to step up and help the average people of this country, by the time you find out exactly how bad things are, it will be too late for you.
So I think you corporate folks would do well to seriously reconsider your actions over the past 15 - 20 years and decide whether you're going to help America or continue lining your own pockets? Are you going to bring the jobs back to America or continue using third world labor as your country collapses? Are you going to stop this bad behavior or are you going to have to be punished?
If you need help deciding, just ask yourself this: What good is all your wealth if an uprising of angry white males leaves you too dead to spend it? Oh, and if you think an uprising can't happen here, think again.
The bullet-resistant vests worn by police and your corporate security do not protect them from the paralyzing effects of a Tazer. Once the cops and security people are neutralized, your guns and those of the angry white males can do their thing. Since there are more of us than you, we win.
There's a fight coming. The cops can't stop it. The lawyers can't stop it. The courts can't stop it. The military is spread too thin around the world to be of any consequence and the government is too broke to fund any more homeland security.
But this fight doesn't have to happen. It can be avoided with a little national loyalty and a little compassion.
Get your Board of Directors together and ask what your company can do to help America for the next 24 months? Talk to your stockholders and ask their permission to cut dividends by half for the sole purpose of hiring more AMERICANS to jobs here in America.
Go on TV and tell the public what you're doing to make things better HERE, at home! You can recover from the horrid reputation you've gotten, and help resolve the horrid situation you have created if you'll only take some time to do the right things for the COUNTRY. A little corporate sacrifice will go a long way to help a lot of us little people. The gratitude and admiration it will generate will be priceless.
Of course, you are free to continue being impressed with yourselves as masters of the universe and keep right on doing what you've been doing. If that is your intention, then know now: The jig is up. Either get right with white males and America, or get your affairs in order.
Hal Turner