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Corporate Harm Reduction Must ReadsThe Shock Doctrine in Action in New Orleans Readers of The Shock Doctrine know that one of the most shameless examples of disaster capitalism has been the attempt to exploit the disastrous flooding of New Orleans to close down that city's public housing projects, some of the only affordable units in the city. Most of the buildings sustained minimal flood damage, but they happen to occupy valuable land that make for perfect condo developments and hotels. [Keep reading…] You can also check out our Shock Doctrine-themed e’Zine and more resources on Disaster Apartheid from Naomi Klein’s website.
Expert Fired Who Warned Levees Would Burst There's another floater. Four years on, there's another victim face down in the waters of Hurricane Katrina, Dr. Ivor van Heerden. I don't get to use the word "heroic" very often. Van Heerden is heroic. The Deputy Director of the Louisiana State University Hurricane Center, it was van Heerden who told me, on camera, something so horrible, so frightening, that, if it weren't for his international stature, it would have been hard to believe: "By midnight on Monday the White House knew. Monday night I was at the state Emergency Operations Center and nobody was aware that the levees had breeched. Nobody." [Keep reading…] Resist or Become Serfs America is devolving into a third-world nation. And if we do not immediately halt our elite’s rapacious looting of the public treasury we will be left with trillions in debts, which can never be repaid, and widespread human misery which we will be helpless to ameliorate. Our anemic democracy will be replaced with a robust national police state. The elite will withdraw into heavily guarded gated communities where they will have access to security, goods and services that cannot be afforded by the rest of us. Tens of millions of people, brutally controlled, will live in perpetual poverty. This is the inevitable result of unchecked corporate capitalism. [Keep reading…] Katrina Pain Index – 2009 0. Number of renters in Louisiana who have received financial assistance from the $10 billion federal post-Katrina rebuilding program Road Home Community Development Block Grant - compared to 116,708 homeowners. 0. Number of hospitals in New Orleans providing in-patient mental health care as of September 2009 despite post-Katrina increases in suicides and mental health problems. [Keep reading…] The Quiet Coup Excerpt: The crash has laid bare many unpleasant truths about the United States. One of the most alarming, says a former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, is that the finance industry has effectively captured our government—a state of affairs that more typically describes emerging markets, and is at the center of many emerging-market crises. If the IMF’s staff could speak freely about the U.S., it would tell us what it tells all countries in this situation: recovery will fail unless we break the financial oligarchy that is blocking essential reform. And if we are to prevent a true depression, we’re running out of time. [Read the article…] More from Simon Johnson at his blog, The Baseline Scenario. New Evidence Surfaces in Post-Katrina Crimes Television news reports are casting new light on the violence that flourished in New Orleans in the anarchic days after Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The reports -- broadcast Thursday by WTAE TV in Pittsburgh [1] and WDSU in New Orleans [2] -- focus on two unsolved crimes: the near-fatal shooting of Donnell Herrington, who was allegedly attacked by a group of white vigilantes in the Algiers Point neighborhood, and the murder of Henry Glover, whose charred remains were discovered on a Mississippi River levee. Both victims are African American. [Keep reading…] Inside The Great American Bubble Machine The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money. Any attempt to construct a narrative around all the former Goldmanites in influential positions quickly becomes an absurd and pointless exercise, like trying to make a list of everything. What you need to know is the big picture: If America is circling the drain, Goldman Sachs has found a way to be that drain — an extremely unfortunate loophole in the system of Western democratic capitalism, which never foresaw that in a society governed passively by free markets and free elections, organized greed always defeats disorganized democracy. [Keep reading…] |
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Corporate Harm Reduction Must Reads
Avi Lewis is back in Fault Lines, a news show on Al Jazeera English. We first met Lewis as the director of The Take which he made with Naomi Klein. “Fire the Boss” was the rallying cry for the film that followed workers in Argentina taking over factories abandoned by their owners after the county’s economic collapse. The idea of workers cooperatives is beloved to us at HelloCoolWorld, and we dream of one day being able to launch a cooperative distribution company with a vision to help those with a message to sell, as well as a story to tell, produce not only books and films, but social change!
>>Watch Fault Lines, California: Failed State Part 2
Blogs Spot On
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