Aftermath of 9/11 Legacy of a moron

Here's something to chew on for a while. (Emphasis added)

Terrorism sows terror, and many States have fallen into a trap set by the terrorists. Ignoring lessons from the past, they have allowed themselves to be rushed into hasty responses, introducing an array of measures which undermine cherished values as well as the international legal framework carefully developed since the Second World War. These measures have resulted in human rights violations, including torture, enforced disappearances, secret and arbitrary detentions, and unfair trials. There has been little accountability for these abuses or justice for their victims.

[...]

... the consequences of pursuing counter-terrorism within a war paradigm ...

From something like The Shock Doctrine?

No.

But it does provide more than a modicum of support for Naomi Klein's theory. In fact, it is a vindication.

It is written, not by a novelist or an activist, but by a panel established by the International Commission of Jurists.

You need to read the whole thing, but if you are rushed for time, satisfy yourself with at least chapter three of the report. And if you want just a quick snap, go directly to the Conclusions & Recommendations: war paradigm on page 64 (pdf 77).

H/T matthewgood

The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot

I had actually meant to get to this some time ago. Naomi Wolf has written a book entitled The End of America: A Letter of Warning To A Young Patriot. She discusses her theory in an interview with Buzzflash.

Wolf looks at the direct comparisons between events today in the United States and past regimes in which democracy and freedoms were crushed by dictators. What she discovers is that almost all of them use the same 10 steps to curtail personal liberty and suspend democracy.

If you go back to Berlin in 1931, it wouldn't have looked so unrecognizable to us. There was a Parliament that was meeting there. There was a constitution. There were abortion rights organizations, human rights lawyers and activists. There were gay rights organizations. There was modern art. People were doing what we're doing. People were going to the movies. They kept living -- and that's why I draw on diaries and memoirs and personal accounts. People were doing what we're doing. They were shopping. They were leading their lives, even as the catastrophe was tightening and tightening around them.

There are scenes in the books I cite that are exactly the same as the scene that played out in the University of Florida last week when the kid was tasered for asking a question and everyone sat still as he was dragged out. That scene was described by Count Kessler, by Victor Klemperer, in memoirs of Germany form 1931-1933. And people then were saying what we are saying: surely this can't get worse; people will come to their senses.

Historians such as Richard Evans point out that, at that point, if the people of Germany had arisen and confronted the abusers of parliamentary process and of the Constitution, the horrors could have been averted. By the way, I am not looking at Germany to make an analogy of any kind about outcomes. I am Jewish and do not take that issue lightly. What I am doing, and I think we honor the victims of the Holocaust by doing so, is looking at how there are threads that recur in the early years of a fascist shift, and lessons we have to learn in time. What we really have to realize is that in a modern democracy, the shift to a closed society doesn't happen overnight.

Interestingly, this book by Naomi Wolf identifies the methods taken to replace democracy with totalitarian leadership.

Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine actually identifies similar activities and draws on the same events. While the theories are different, they actually seem to compliment each other, Klein identifying how a population in shock allows government to proceed with an agenda they would otherwise reject, and Wolf laying out the steps used by dictators once they have set their agendas in motion.

In light of this, we need to pay close attention to what both Klein and Wolf are saying.

I'll be producing a review of The Shock Doctrine towards the end of this month. Once I've gotten a copy of The End of America, I'll see about putting up a review of that too.

H/T reader SB

The SPP and "The Shock Doctrine"

Chet Scoville of Vanity Press, blogging at Shakesville :
"...the SPP is an especially dangerous example of the privatization of government that neoconservatism has been demanding and putting into place for a quarter of a century: the sort of thing Naomi Klein outlines in The Shock Doctrine. It's especially dangerous because, being multinational and happening as it is below the radar, it will be extremely difficult to undo once it's done."

Stephen Lendman in an excellent review of Klein's book at Mostly Water :
"The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" explodes the myth of "free market" democracy.

On Milton Friedman's Chicago School revolution of rapid-fire economic transformation he called "shock treatment" :
"Its central tenets are structurally adjusted mass-privatizations, government deregulation, unrestricted free market access for foreign corporations, and deep cuts in social spending with repressive laws."

On "the whirling revolving door between government and business taken to a new level" :
"That's the whole idea in a get rich quick environment - get an impressive government title, stay in office long enough in a department handing out big contracts, collect insider information with market value, then quit and cash in. Klein calls public service now "little more than a reconnaissance mission for future work in the disaster capitalism complex."

"Fighting "terrorism" is big business. September 11 unlocked the potential, a huge new growth market was created, and protection from terror became more important than big brother watching."

Klein calls it "an unprecedented convergence of unchecked police powers and unchecked capitalism, a merger of the shopping mall and the secret prison."

The Security and Prosperity Partnership : the North American merger of the shopping mall and the secret prison.

Cross-posted at Creekside