Showing posts with label Philip Zimbardo. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Philip Zimbardo. Show all posts

Shock Doctors of The World ........

Iraq - The REAL purpose behind the Invasion, Occupation and Shock and Awe

I have just completed reading through a few books, “Shock Doctrine” by Naomi Klien, “The Lucifer Effect” by Philip Zimbardo and “The Age of the Warrior” by Robert Fisk.

Some heavy reading indeed as all books look at the reality behind the myth of the US/UK Governments desire to bring democracy to Iraq in the context of Global Free Trade Movement as espoused by Milton Friedman, the IMF, WTO et al.

Shock Doctrine explores the connection between torture techniques as developed from the (insane) idea of Electro Shock Therapy, Sensory Deprivation, disorientation etc and the history of Free Market Economics in South America over the past 40 years.

The policies of the IMF, WTO and the UK/US Governments have never been voted into being for one reason alone - those policies attack the very poorest, undermine workers rights and collective power, dismantle the welfare state and hand a countries resources over to ‘the market’ - those who trade in shares, commodities and currencies - in the belief, the ideology of Milton Freidman and the Chicago School, that unrestrained capitalism is the only way to enable economies to continually expand and grow.

Freidman hated the idea that a Government could control and own it’s own utilities, health system, education system etc. on behalf of its population. His belief was that all these ‘Services’ ought to be run as business enterprises in private hands as he believed that the pure self interested profit motive would be more efficient, more effective in delivering the services than the welfare motivation of Keynes. He saw Keynes as an appeaser of the working classes in the same way Tony Blair sees the Anti-war movement as appeasers of Saddam.

In South America, the experiment started with Chile and Pinochet, and continues today in Iraq, an experiment (it is an experiment!) that is as bloody and cruel as anything the Nazis ever did. Nearly 20 million have died as a direct result of these policies in South America. Many more have died in Africa, Asia. And in Europe all our public utilities have been placed in private hands, along with the bulk of our health systems, and currently our education in the process of being transferred as we speak.

Friedman knew that the only way to test out his theories was to start from a blank slate, which entailed the destruction of whatever was in place prior. He also knew that it would most likely or not take a huge shock to the system to create the conditions required. Because of course the poorest voters would never vote for these kinds of policies, and the poor in many countries make up the bulk of the electorate.

The theory of Shock Therapy and Torture is that by obliterating the patient/prisoners sense of who they are, through disorienting procedures, one arrives at a point wherein the object of the process is a blank slate, and can then be rewritten, recrafted in terms that the therapist/torturer can define. Of course the doctors believed that they were doing this for the patients own good. Or so they told themselves.

Torturers too believe in the ultimate aim of their work. So do the economists of the WTO and IMF. In fact their attachment to their belief is so strong that they ignore/deny the damage their procedures cause, and invariably lay the blame, when it appears not to work, upon the patient, prisoner or country. Comments about Arab peoples being unable to manage their affairs are frequently made by the Economists and Neo-Conservatives such as Dick Cheny, Donald Rumsfeld and others…

Iraq was invaded for two reasons. One reason is that in Iraq there is much oil. Saddams attempt in November 2002 to sell Oil in Euros, showed that he was no longer ‘Our Man’. That move had to be stopped, because the strength of the US dollar resided in it’s exclusive use as the currency for buying/selling Oil.

Furthermore, there was a distinct possibility that in time, with the potential fall of Saddam through internal Iraqi action, Iraq would become an independent democracy, like it’s neighbour Iran, and that it’s people would refuse to accept the privatisation their various branches of Government (Health. Education, Communications, Transit Systems etc etc) as required by the Global Free Trade movement.

That would place the Oil of Iraq and Iran outside the influence of the Free Trade Movement, and threatened the cosy relationship between the US/UK Government and the corrupt dictatorship of the Saudis… and it would also allow another economic model, based upon Democratic Islamic principles (which says usury is a crime), to build a base from which to compete with the Free Trade Movement (the stock exchanges of New York and London). A movement that would usurp the powers of the rich in favour of the poorest and equate to a redistribution of wealth across the board which the Global Free Trade Movement was designed to avoid. A movement that might, like the current resurgence of Indigenous South American People Power, usurp the IMF and the W|TO.

The second reason was to create the absolute shock required to re-engineer Iraqs economy.

Iraq is also a warning, that after 40 years of Free Market Economic Expansion through covert means, that now the gloves were off and that the UK/US Governments were openly prepared to go to War (ignore the pretexts you have read about) to ensure that The Free Market would dominate the economies of the Globe.

Governmental Robbery nothing less. Tony Blair is a War Criminal, yet he is also an economic gangster, as was Thatcher, Major and as is Brown.

I highly recommend this book - it’s easy to read, her prose is excellent and what she reveals is essential for activists and concerned citizens to know and understand. Only when you know what has been done can you make changes towards health.

http://www.naomiklein.org/shock-doctrine




Kindest regards

Corneilius

Do what you love, it's your gift to universe



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