The Shock Doctrine and Ireland

Naomi Klein

 Naomi Klein

“A state of shock is something that happens to us not only when something bad happens. It’s what happens to us when we lose our narrative, when we lose our story, when we become disoriented…A period of crisis, like the one we are in, Is a good time to place ourselves in the lineage of history, access our roots so that we can envision properly.”

Its clear when you look around today, in every facet of life, that our species is at a crisis point. Whether it be an ecological, economical, existential or a crisis in trust, we are at a point in history which could decide this generations future and thoughtscape. To fully be aware of our current ecological and economical position ( which truly effects our existential and trust with one another) we must go into the history of how we have gotten to this position of total crisis.

The Shock Doctrine, for me, goes into some of the secrets of why our world works the way it currently does and is an interesting lense by which to view our current paradigm. Where inequality grows larger, less people are happier statistically, humans are living longer but less healthy lives and material pressures have smothered the ability for many to ask the existential questions and focus on their higher selves.

The Shock Doctrine’s basic premise is that we as a species have been shocked into accepting the realities of hydro capitalistic structures , fascist governments and totalitarian states… As Naomi Klien states “Milton Friedman(the Economist) understood the utility of crisis. ‘only a crisis, actual or perceived, produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions taken, depend on the ideas that are lying around…’ ”

The Shock Doctrine therefore tells an alternative version of history and explains how we got into this mess in the first place.

First shock | Chile 1970

In the 1950’s and 1960’s, Chile had many services provided to the public by the Government. American corporations were worried that the government may interfere with their interests. The US state department then began to sponsor Chilian scholars to come and receive PHD’s in ‘free market economics’ at Chicago University with Milton Friedman… Naturally these students then taught back in Chile. In 1970, a politician set for power under the ideal of uniting the people and on a position of continued government service provision was very unpopular with the American corporation ‘ITT’ who owned the Nation Chilean Telecom provider. Nixon, The US president of the time, backed the CEO of ITT and eventually gave the US government a mandate to destabilize the Chilian situation. It didn’t work and the president was elected but within  months, the US government began to economically strangle the Chilian economy and organized coups with General Pinochet at the helm. After 41 years of peace in Chile, the shock of war arrived at Chile and the president of chile was killed.

Now began the implementation of the corpotocracy and free market economics blueprints, which were outlined in a document called ‘El Ladrillo’ (the bric)… this was then given to Pinochet who began to implement the programme… 13 thousand were killed in the next week and thousands imprisoned… With the economy now in shock, El Ladrillo was implemented which involved as we now today know as common economic practice – the removal of price controls, the selling off of state companies, removal of import barriers( which we criminally label, ‘ free trade’ now) and cuts to government expenditure and services… “ Friedman would later explain the importance of the Chilean experiment…

The impacts of the first shock were crippling to Chile, within a year inflation was 300%, the highest in the world… within a year, the average family on the minimum wage was spending 74% of its income on bread alone! What then insued was the introduction of a military dictatorship which led to concentration camps, with 100,000 prisoners at times being brought through the Friedman experiment.

This is free market economics finest hour… crushing an economy and then crushing any opponents to an alternative vision and as you will see this story has been played out for the last 60 years. By way of note, Friedman would win the nobel prize in 1976… at the height of Pinochets despotic regime.

Second Shock  | Argentina 1976

A military coup overtook Argentina and three generals were put in charge which then placed members of the Chicago School of Economics into powerful positions in the military government. Implementing the doctrine resulted with Argentinian wages falling 40% in one year, factories closed and poverty exploded. People were then fear stricken into accepting these polices with a ‘ disappearing people’ regime put in place. Torture techniques taught at the “Escuale de America’s’ in Argentian were utilized on the populace and included the good old Guantanamo tactics of rape, induced drowning, breaking of bones, sensory depravation and anything else you can think of as immoral, unethical and beyond reprieve. These techniques were used on anyone who opposed the free market regime, they were used on students, teachers and academics as well as everyday people.

Third Shock | Great Britain 1979

Within a year of Thatchers reign, which included all the doctrine of free market zombinomcs… unemployment had doubled within three years, the Uk strikes grew ferociously in many industries and after three years, when Thatcher was proposed that she should adopt some of the methods by which Pinochet used, she commented “ In Britain, with our democratic institution and with the need for a high degree of consent, some of the measures adopted by Chile are quite unacceptable.”

As Klein highlights at this stage in history “ Thatcher’s profound unpopularity seemed to prove once again that free Market fundamentalism was simply too unpopular, too directly harmful towards too many people to survive in a democratic state, where governing requires the consent of the governed, unlike a military dictatorship… what ultimately saved Thatcher back from the brink, was a crisis… the ultimate crisis… a war.” And so the Falklands war in 1982 ensured that she could input some of the economic shock therapy used in Chile.

The Mining strike of 1983 was such a vehicle of using the shock treatment and after a year of striking, Thatcher who used brutality as a means of directing popular thought, won the battle and beat the mining union. This then allowed Thatcher to sell all of the UK’s assets including Water, Oil, Electricity, Schools, Healthcare and finally in 1986 she de- regulated the financial industry which is part of the reason that inequality is so large in the world now. To whit, pre thatcher, the UK CEO earned 10 times the amount of the average worker… by 2007, CEO’s earned 100 times the average worker… to illustrate this on a global scale, pre Regan in the USA, the average CEO earned 43 times the average worker, in 2007 this was 400 times as much.

Fourth Shock | Russia 1989

As Communism fell across the Eastern bloc, Gorbechov, the Russian president had explained to world leaders that he was looking to introduce a Scandanavian style part capitalism part communism economic system into Russia and all the leaders of the world were patting him on the back and saying yeah, just open up the Eastern bloc and sure we will talk afterwards. Gorbechov, a man like many leaders who actually wanted the best for his country… was tricked and when the time arrived for Russia to ask for help from the powers that be in 1991. The IMF, The World Bank, said they would only lend Russia money if they used it in a shock therapy fashion, there would be no gradual assistance, either implement these policies or we are not going to support you. Within a month there was a coup in Russia and Gorbechov was ousted, not having acquiesed to the powers that be and Yeltsin was put in power.

Free Market economics was brought in by Yeltsin and chaos ensued in the Russian federation. State industries were sold at bargain prices to the few lucky enough to be in powerful positions. The few gained at the expense of the many and by 1992 the average Russian consumed 40% less food then they did in 1991. Moscow became the new wild west and with the extravagance and extreme poverty, the drug cartels and the prostitution industries proliferated and Free Market economics provided the shock.

The average Russian did not like what was going on and in 1993, the government repealed the special powers that Yeltsin had put in place and that same day, Yeltsin called a ‘state of emergency’ but the parliament deemed it unconstitutional and so Yeltsin went the Pinochet route and dissolved parliament…

The West then backed Yeltsin, with Clinton and Al Gore commenting that “ Yeltsin, is the best hope for democracy in Russia”… the government voted to impeach Yeltsin and the vote came in at 99% to 1%… Yeltsin wasn’t going to give up now… he brought the military into Moscow and began massacring those who supported the parliaments decision… and eventually ordered tanks to shell the capitals parliament building… Yeltisin gained control and further implemented crony capitalist policies…

By 1998, 80% of Russian farms were bankrupt… 72 million more people were in poverty since 1991 while Moscow would go on to have more billionaires than any other city in the world.

Fifth Shock | USA September 11 2001

On September the 10^th 2001, Donald Rumsfeld, disclosed his plans to the public that he planned to ‘ privatize the US military ‘ and outlined that he planned to stage “A war on bureaucracy at the Pentagon” and then the next day, a 777 plane flew into the Pentagon building… and on the same day the  ‘SHOCK’ of September 11 came to the world…

This enacted a whole new dimension of perceived war with another culture we knew nothing about… new stories now appeared… there was now an ‘axis of evil’ and that everyone was at ‘war with terror’… ‘Homeland Security’ which didn’t even register before 2001, is now an industry larger then Hollywood and the music industry combined… between 2001 and 2006, the federal government gave out 130 billion to private contractors… this has created the disaster capitalism complex where the economy is built on fear…

This shock did not lead to direct economic sanctions on US citizens, although it did remove funding from schools and education but what was the main function, was that it opened the way to invoke the disaster complex into Afghanistan and Iraq which followed.

In Iraq, the three types of Shock were introduced. Initially, a missile onslaught that shocked all of Iraq into states of sensory depravation… economic shock through the instant firing of 500,000 state workers and removing education funding, ( Iraq had an 83% literacy rate before the war) US corporations came in and received all restructuring funding for Iraq… for instance, ‘Halliburton’ received 20 billion in contracts to ‘rebuild’ Iraq… and then Military occupation through the US military… extreme measures were brought in to contain the invasion with the obligatory torture techniques used by US military.

What this war did, is privatise war in a new world of perceived enemies… putting profit into war and therefore incentivising its initiation… profiting from the 1000 deaths a week that were happening in 2006 and ensuring that mass Iraqi refugees would never forget what the USA had done to them for the rest of their lives.

NATURAL DISASTER SHOCKS | Sri Lanka, Katrina, Thailand

People were prohibited from going back to their beaches after the tsunami in Sri Lanka and Thailand because the land was being sold to  private resorts… this is the systematic raiding of the public sphere after a disaster when they are too worried about the day to day survival…

In relation to Katrina, the wealthy drove out of town while the poor and old stayed to die and deal with the hurricane… after Katrina, The US government privatised education and state housing was not rebuilt… the same old story.

FINANCIAL SHOCK DOCTRINE | Global 2008

Austerity, massive tax hikes, economic scrutiny and fascism are all facets of the global asset strip that has been created by the bailing out of banks that lended themselves the finance in the first place… the financial shock doctrine has been created from deregulation and the fractional reserve banking system that I have gone into in previous posts in ‘Earth Capita’. The shock to the Western world has been dealt and the question is…. how does this effect Ireland- which is an example for many of the western world countries- in that, austerity is paying down debts that were accumulated from bailing out banks and corporations can be viewed as a direct transfer of wealth from the middle class to the elite… while the IMF, World bank and ratings agencies collude to instigate massive austerity and initialize programmes, within debt laden countries, where nations sell off their assets to raise money to pay down debt E.G Ireland selling its water rights, forests, natural gas and eventual telecom to private interests… this asset strip further allows fascist tendancies from the state who are required to tighten the grip on freedom so that they can attain the financies from the populace… this is shock doctrine for the west.

At least there is not a war being fought over tax collections and people are not going to jail… but the shock doctrines is alive and well in Ireland and its up to us to be courageous and choose different paths outside the global structures… we need to bring back our own banking system on our own currency, undo the harm done of accepting economic slavery through the globalised debt system and get back to doing what makes us humans happy… such as spending time together, making art and music and sharing our love with eachother… that’s a future to believe in but its up to us to get out there…

As Naomi Klein finishes ‘The Shock Doctrine’ she notes that

“In 1937… do you know, how many strikes there were in this country? 4740 strikes, lasting an average of 20 days. Do you know how many strikes there were in 2007? - Twenty-one.”

If we want change, we have to go out there and make it happen

Sovereignty at all costs?

Sovereignty at all costs?

At what stage does economic wealth in all its benefits and drawbacks, become a burden so great, that it must be banished for the greater good of a nation? We in Ireland are facing a powerful dilemma that will effect us for at least a generation… do we choose a short term soft landing of bailouts, funding injections and handouts from morally bankrupt institutions such as the IMF and ECB or do we protect our sovereignty and except a swift but painful devaluation and lower standards of GDP living ( potentially higher standards of happiness) which will set us up for a new vision of Ireland?

This is the question asked and answered by many of the worlds poorer nations at certain times in their existence. To play ball with the big nations and accept credit and its enslavement or grow alone, isolated from the capitalist shrine… we all have to face the American dream at one stage and ask whether this is the future we want. To me, the easiest way to make a decision, is go through all the permutations of potential problems and benefits of making a decision and allow for a considered progression to be made. In this case, we will look at what has happened to Ireland since we joined the Eurozone and currency union, we will look at who has benefitted from the union and we will gather two separate visions for Ireland depending on whether we continue to take more bailouts, in essence, continuing in the Euro project or we envision a different nation, one on the periphery of Europe going it alone.

Lets look at the History of Ireland and how we have got here… Our nation had sovereignty over its operations for the first Five or Six thousand years of its inaugaration… We were a pagan land of mysticism, folklore and raw determinist people with an eye on the esoteric of life… We flourished on this rock, with little need for trade and for outside help but with this ancient history there must come struggle to appreciate that with which we once had… So in arrived the various conqueror’s who wished to see what the Irish had to offer which ran us through the mill of Vikings, Christians French, British and for a brief moment, we gaped our head above the parapet only to succumb to Eurozone captors… our sovereignty took a long hard blow and for any historian it must be clear that Ireland enjoyed one of the longest periods of sovereignty that any nation ever has enjoyed… But for the past 1000 years we have been battered by others and should hopefully as a race, understand that which we have lost and that which is so precious it must be bolstered at all costs.

We fought our captors for centuries to attain sovereignty and now it looks like we will give it all away so that we can drink Latte’s and buy Prada… You see the cheap credit offered by the Eurozone captors is but a sideshow bagatelle to the insidious possibilities that this opens up in terms of direct robbery. On every debt transation, there is a debtor and a creditor and once the debtor cannot pay their debts, the creditor comes looking for something else by which to ensure payment… in this case with the Eurozone captors, we are dealing with the ECB as the creditor, who is in turn backed and implicitly aligned with the Federal Reserve and IMF which means that if Ireland inc- who has been taught through the American dream to buy Latte’s and Prada by using credit cards instead of earned cash to perform purchases- wants to continue to live this unsustainable dream, then they must sell assets, such as natural resources like forests, water tables and energy sources so that they can continue to pay their creditors, aka Eurozone captors… You see, the debt is a form of implicit slavery, we have borrowed the money and now we are no longer in control of our assets… this goes even further then assets though, it goes into political sovereignty which is the most insidious aspect of our current captors, for they have spun a web so smartly as to ensure that our part as member in the ‘club’ means that we must accept the loss of sovereignty over decision making policies for our own country due to the credit we have taken ( which was created out of thin air don’t forget, in the form of paper currency counterfeiting)… It does not have to be like this, for we do have free will but the people in power in Ireland seem as collusive and defeatist as they could possibly be and have no idea of the ramifications of taking bailouts from entities such as the IMF who will ensure that Ireland is stripped of all its valuable assets- sold to multi national companies - and enshrine poverty into this nation for generations anon.

There is a choice though and that must not be forgotten, just as the credit printed by the Eurozone captors is merely an illusion so is the need to pay back that credit… Countries default on debt all the time, it has happened ritualistically on the globe since the monetary system came into place with the most recent examples being Brazil in 1996, Argentina in 2001 and Iceland in 2009… You only have to look at Brazil and Iceland to see how well a good old default can treat your country in the medium to long term, in a monetary system like ours… defaults flush the badness out of an economy and give the economy new life to start again, hopefully on a different path… the other option as we have seen in countries like Japan and Ireland currently, is a slow degrading muddle through economy where hope dies and its incumbents emigrate en masse.

To get a perspective on the Eurozone and see what has happened since we gave up our economic sovereignty over interest rates, currency and stimulus abilities in 1999, we must look at how Ireland was doing up until the European currency came in to power… During the 1990’s, Ireland began to perform exceptionally well and at an adjusted sustainable pace of economic expansion… the country was in a good place financially and we were gaining the added benefits of Eurozone funding for infrastructure projects such as road building and financial services… at this point I would mention that these funds could have been directed at projects that had ACTUAL long lasting benefits to a nation with Healthcare and education being the most relevant areas… but everything seemed rosy about being part of the Eurozone, it eased trade and ensured that some of the poorer parts of Europe could catch up with the old empires of Britain, France, germany and Spain. This would eventually make for a more just world, which makes the entire planet a happier place to inhabit… The problems with the Eurozone began when it went from a economic trade based union to a political union… Old empires do not do well with power and the move towards a single currency moved us from autonomous states into a political union.

We accepted a loss of sovereignty on our food production through the CAP European agreement which meant that the skills that had been built up in the cultivation of our land for centuries were lost and farmers who had known only the nurturing of the land became property developers and were paid to keep their land fallow. We accepted this, with butter, milk and meat mountains stockpiled in warehouses around Ireland while people died starving all over the planet… but this is progress and we wanted our American dream with more Latte’s and more shoes… Then we accepted the loss of sovereignty over our seas, we let the Eurozone captors fish our waters, reduce our qouto of fish and ensure that we export the best fish to other nations for they had better purchasing power… again in the process losing the vital skills of families fishing the same bits of ocean for centuries… Now we cannot feed ourselves and we are forgotting the skills to do so, making us very vulnerable to any oil or food shocks. We accepted this and spent our time borrowing money and building concrete slabs on our land… for this reason and many others, there is great sadness now in Ireland but this is what debt slavery does to people… it disables them, debilitates them until they give up and accept whatever demands their captors ask for…This is the shock doctrine… This is why we accept bailouts from the ECB/IMF, this is why we think the only way out is ‘austerity’, it is because we are shell shocked and debilitated by what our captors have put over us.

Sovereignty or slavery… This is the dilemma today… Soveriegnty means standing up and telling our captors that we have a different vision for our nation, not one waiting for bailouts and handouts one that can go its own road, one that can get back to its heart and forget the Latte’s and Starbucks and Costa and Tesco and speculation… we can get back to our basics.

So here is the potential alternate between now and 2025… We can pay down debt, being crushed by the interest in a perpetual cycle of recessions and slow growth and ensure the brain power of this nation leaves and cant return again, making lives in countries with sovereignty like Australia and Canada or we can envision an Ireland that encompasses what we as Irish people are passionate about…

Here is a vision of sovereignty for Ireland:

1)    Default on our debt: cleanse the system for a renewed country, keep all available cash in the country safe, repatriate any funds abroad and back into the country so that we can build a banking system with foundations and a treasury with some cash to put into growth projects

2)    Create a local Irish currency: not the punt, a new currency and use all available Funds currently in the Irish treasury to buy as much Gold as we possibly can, so that global bond investors will buy our bonds in the knowledge that our currency is backed by something other than air and ill-followed trust.

3)    Promote: tourism, art, literature and music as the main backbones of our economy. These are true passions and our true talents. We are smarter and more creative then working for exploitive multi nationals like Google, Glaxo Smithkline and Intel.

4)    Put all available cash into Education, healthcare and renewable energy… these sectors are the long term backbone of any economy and renewable energy has the potential for massive growth and employment.

5)    Feed ourselves- Lets renounce the CAP and reclaim our fisheries and let our farmers tend this fertile land… We could be food sufficient within Five years with a huge effort.

6)    Regain sovereignty- Try and stay in the Eurozone if possible, The Eurozone works as an economic union but not as a political one… We need to protect our own sovereignty while not being utterly isolationist.

Its that sound you hear( Totally Dublin OCT 2011 Article for Musical village)

“Its that sound you hear, that sound you hear that lingers in your ear”

The Wiseguys- Executive Suite

Its the sound, the nano bytes, melodic chorus and stomach womping bass. its the wuthering psych ballad and the flute at a million angles. Its the congo at Amazon pace, leering voice of a misunderstood soul glowering over a sumptous beat… we all want it on us, in us, around us and for it to last for just another delirious second. This is why we go to gigs… to get that touch of ecstasy, for that brief moment to forget your packed lunch and commune with something; the music gods, the sound gods, whoever they are. Its an arrival, a culmination of being at the right place at the right time, you made it happen, you were there when this and that note created a rumbunction so loud the world forgot to breathe.

Thats the sound and how we all from birth to death crave to get into one of those moments, as a surfer pokes their heads in and out of barrels, a music heathen awaits their destined moment and once in their bubble of music delirium, everything is right, everything is going to be ok. This is one side of the musical coin, the observer finds one place in the ecstatic domain but there lies another within the grasp of every observer and that is in the entertainer. Imagine that every week you could find yourself in a room of observers that any moment could and will become the entertainers. This is buzz incarnate. This is the idea behind the Jampot Collective.

Your there in the Musical Village hotspot, The ‘Lost Society’ is cranking beats, nothing generic, potentially a string of noises that may alarm, tantalise and tear your life apart and reconstitute it into something potentially a little more glorious then it was before. All of a moment, you get the feeling, you hear something missing; the Dj, Bass player, Flutist, Violinist and Keyboard tapper are missing something vital. Something must be done, the ecstasy must be provided and pronto… your feet have wandered, they have failed to listen to inhibitions, your there now on the stage, fixing the sound, fixing it to your tuning and then the moment is finished. You step off the stage. Everything is in its right place.

The frequency in Dublins fair city is exquisite, we are a ridiculously musical nation, we know good sound and thats why its essential that if your in a band, you get yourself into the village. if your a music heathen get to the village, if your  a musical genius but never like to show it off ( and you know you are) then get to the village. All in all, the village loves you and so does the all knowing and showing Sound.