John Cusack interviews Naomi Klein, author of 'The Shock Doctrine; The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'

John Cusack interviews Naomi Klein, author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, which uses the war in Iraq to pull back the curtain on free market myths and expose the forces that are really driving our economy. She details how the crony capitalists running the Bush administration saw post-invasion Iraq as the perfect proving ground for all their pet free-market policies.

The fantasy was that a privitazied and corporatized Iraq would become a free-market utopia that would spread the gospel of the market throughout the Middle East. Klein's writings on Iraq helped inspire John Cusack to create a stinging new satiric film called War, Inc. The pair recently sat down for a HuffPost video - a lively and insightful conversation about The Shock Doctrine, Iraq, the burgeoning new economy that has sprung up around the war on terror, and Baghdad's Green Zone, which Klein calls "a heavily armed Carnival Cruise ship parked in a sea of despair."


see the interview video here

My thoughts; I've been only slightly attuned to the concepts portrayed in Naomi Klein's new book. Attuned enough though, to recognize the realities of how humans react to 'shock and awe', whether that is the death of a loved one that happens daily to families within communities, whether it is a national disaster/catastrophe as Sept 11, 2001 when the World Trade Towers were hit and came down, whether it is the climate of war, whether it is a tsunamic or hurricane of epic proportions, or whether it is the eroding effects of exposure to the exploitation of abuse in family and/or community situations.

What stands out for me about the premise of Naomi's research and thus, her book, is that she went looking for something she thought she would find to be a truism only to find a larger more ominous truism. It might well be worthwhile for the 'movement' as it calls itself to broaden the message, lose some of the old arguments and develop a strategy, replete with a message to include talking points to address the broader context of the shock doctrine and the rise of disaster capitalism as the underpinnings to what we know is happening all around us, inclusive of why Iraq and why stay, why no relief at the time or now to Hurricane Katrina sufferers, why the mortgage crisis which is upon is will generate an economic disaster for some while supporting the capitalist utopia laboratory Naomi points to in her book.

Beyond the concerns of President Eisenhower in his warnings of military industrial complex, beyond the concepts of marxism, communisim, beyond the concept of corporate America, it seems to me that as long as the 'movement' continues to use old strategies to counter old tensions, it cannot be effective in countering what is already in play now within our country and on the more global stage. I encourage and urge a reading and discussion of Naomi's book and the premise laid out in what she has found in her research.