shock doctrine

According to this author's research, Malcolm Fraser contributed policies which would assist the dismantling of Australia's then growing democracy and aid and abet this colony's overpopulation and overshoot of its own resources. These actions should not be forgotten, despite any subsequent helpful comments on foreign policy, a long time later. After the Whitlam government was sacked, and during high unemployment, the Fraser Liberal/National Party government (November 1975- March 1983) reinstituted economic policies that were dependent on rapid population growth - through high immigration - and high energy consumption. [1]

Whitlam's concept and attempts to create a system of feedback loops from population to housing were dismantled or under-financed. Prime Minister Fraser abolished DURD very early in his government, under which Federal funding for urban and regional development declined by 86 per cent. [2] He also began to liberalise the foreign investment rules, with the Foreign Takeovers Act (1975). [3]

As a result of the wars and sanctions against Iraq since 1990, found by the UK Government's own Chilcot Inquiry in 2012 to have been illegal, 3.3 million Iraqis have died and many more have fled, including 1.2 million to Syria, according to Wikipedia. Knowing that the same people who invaded Iraq, Afghanistan and Libya are now arming, supplying and paying the so-called "Free Syrian Army" (FSA), Syrian patriots are fighting hard against the FSA killers -- and winning.

Please attend a public meeting at 7.30PM on Wednesday 6 March for peace in Syria at the Unitarian Church, 110 Grey Street, East Melbourne. (The previously advertised time of 6.30PM was wrong. Our apologies.)

How did stealing from the public to enrich the private sector become a norm in Australia and why do some religions give it moral credence? This is a reminder of the existence of an important, publicly available article about the rise of right-wing so-called 'think tanks' in Australia since the mid 1970s and their recent tendency to combine forces with the religious right. Here, from another source and angle, are arguments that reinforce candobetter's message about the problems Australia has with the growth lobby and its merchants.

Manufacturing right-wing consent

An article by Marcus Smith and Peter Marden (2008): "Conservative Think Tanks and Public Politics," Australian journal of Political Science, 43:4, 699-717 describes how so-called 'think tanks' rose with the funding of private industry players who found in them a way to influence public perception to confuse business and commercial interest as "synonymous with public values". A hallmark of the language used for this was the notion of 'commonsense'. The authors identify a 'fact/value dichotomy' to push a 'logic of economic growth'.

Burial at sea?
Osama bin Laden's body should never have been disposed of without extensive evidence of death and identity being made available to the public. How is anyone to believe reports of his death? Cui bono?

Dialysis in the desert

I agree with Paul Craig Roberts in his article, "Osama bin Laden’s Second Death." Reports on Osama bin Laden's death do sound like an April Fool's joke. I don't have the same problem as Roberts does with the idea of bin Laden having renal dialysis in the desert or having problems transferring funds. Portable renal dialysis machines exist and rich people move money around in many forms, including as drugs, all over the world.

Poor taste

I don't pretend to know how Osama bin Laden lived or moved his money nor when he died. I don't find the media reports of 2nd May 2011 very believable and I didn't enjoy watching the President of the United States saying how great it was they had killed someone. I could have written that speech better, maybe starting with, "Regretfully, we announce that we found we had no alternative ..." But, can we believe anything the U.S. government says about international politics these days?

...

Are troops what Haiti needs?

In the above news item, "Are Troops what Haiti needs?" Produced by Jesse Freeston, Reporter Ansel Herz says, "At one of the hospitals in Haiti that was not crushed there are basically just a few Haitian doctors there Haitian Red Cross then a team of French doctors probably about seven of them ... They're basically treating like one or two people at a time... They're poorly equipped. They don't have all the supplies that they need. ..There are hundreds of people outside this hospital in tents, waiting for some kind of care, many of them have been there for days." (Ed. There were similar reports on the French news a few days ago, and also that the US forces were more or less controlling the one airport and stopping other nations from helping the Haitians.) Ansel Herz also comments on the hyping of looting themes broadcast by mainstream news in Britain, with pictures showing two men trying to get items out of a collapsed building. He says that he has not seen any looting and that people are trying to find food and are sharing it with each other.

Excerpts plus comments posted by Frank Holland
Harold Pinter has died.
His Nobel speech summed up many European's view of the USA, I wonder how Obama will address those truths.

A copy of the article One Year After the Publication of The Shock Doctrine, A Response to the Attacks was included in the Naomi Klein newsletter (www.naomiklein.org/contact-naomi-klein) which I received today. There was almost complete silence from the right wing think-tanks exposed in The Shock Doctrine for many months following its publication. In Australia, I nearly always encountered total silence from the ideological co-thinkers of Milton Friedman in online discussions, that is, until very recently when, in an Online Opinion forum discussion Winning the War In Iraq , I encountered posts, the content of which seemed to originate from a paper The Klein Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Polemics published by The Cato Institute on 14 May.

Naomi Klein was interviewed on 16 July 2008 on the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation (CBC) TV show "The Hour", for 15 minutes, about her book, The Shock Doctrine, Penguin 2007. Her biography and her family background show a deep concern for social justice and human rights. Unfortunately there seems to be an environmental naivety which could cancel out many of her efforts and her family's on these issues.

It looks like a corporate-agribusiness group called the "Foodbowl Group" have tapped a short-circuit in local, regional and state democracy in an attempt to take over land and water in the Murray Darling Basin. (See #FoodbowlGroup">end this article for who the Foodbowl Group are).

Plans are for a $600 million pipeline to be paid for by Melbourne Water users who've been told to expect their bills to double over the next five years. They'll also pay nearly a third of the billion dollars allocated to carry 75 billion litres of water a year from the Goulburn Murray River system over the Great Dividing Range to Melbourne.

What is going on?

The Foodbowl group describes its aims as "To support the transition of small farming enterprises to world-competitive, sustainable agribusiness enterprises with a variety of models that maintain and enhance community cohesion." (More 'aims' lower down in article).

But were they invited? Were they asked?

Apparently not.

I hate to resort to clichés, but this is a ‘must read’ book – the kind that only gets published once in a hundred years.

The theory Klein develops is that the main reason for the rise of democracy and social-welfare with its old age pensions, public hospitals, public housing, and universal education after the Great Depression of the 1930s was that the beneficiaries of the robber-baron culture which had dominated until then were aware that if people were kept sufficiently miserable, they would turn to communism and socialism.

Reading of the desecration and live dismemberment of Iraq and seeing the name KPMG, I could not help but think of how our recent Premier, Steven Bracks, who was so fond of public-private partnerships, and whose government gave away 20 ha of public land in Royal Park to private 52% owned Singapore developer, Australand. In a move which even the departing Queensland Premier criticised, Bracks recently began to work for KPMG Peat Marwick, which, incidentally, is involved in reconstruction efforts in East Timor.