But back to the cited column and diary ... Mr. Obama seems to have made a mistake beyond, and far more important than, appointing Mr. Dashele as Secretary of HHS. As more information comes out about his economic team, that team is beginning to take on the appearance of the foxes guarding the hen house, and the economic recovery (and we) are the hens. Why do I say this? See below.
Decade of the 1970's -
Sergio de Castro, Pinochet's 'Friedman Schooled' economics minister, said he could never have done it without Pinochet's iron fist backing him up. (Referring to the implementation of a brutal policy for 'Wiping the Slate Clean' in order to make way for the new religion of a U.S. sponsored, 'Free Market' ideology. The economists taught their students to look upon the population as a psychiatric patient, requiring 'Shock Treatment' in effort to cleanse it of its 'collective' cancer, simply because it - the population mindset - didn’t fit Friedman's free-market model.)
It was Nixon who would give the Friedman Chicago Boys and their professors something they had long dreamed of: a chance to prove that their capitalist utopia was more than a theory in a basement workshop – a shot at remaking a country from scratch. Democracy had been inhospitable to the Chicago Boys in Chile; dictatorship would prove an easier fit. – Klein
Chile’s coup, when it finally came, would feature three distinct forms of shock, a recipe that would be duplicated in neighboring countries and would reemerge, three decades later, in Iraq. The shock of the coup; financial shock; the other, Ewen Cameron’s shock, drug and sensory deprivation research, codified as torture techniques in the ‘Kubark’ manual and disseminated through extensive CIA training programs for Latin American police and military. – Klein
This is the same Free Market formula Reaganomics and Thatcherism, whole heartedly, imbued itself in. Amongst the Chicago Boy Institution’s professors included such luminaries of destruction as George Shultz, and Donald Rumsfeld; Rumsfeld describing Friedman and his colleagues “a cluster of geniuses.”
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror. Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
In 1985 John McCain visits Pinochet. McCain described the meeting with Pinochet “as friendly and at times warm, but noted that Pinochet does seem obsessed with the threat of communism.” Gee, I wonder who planted that bug into Pinochet’s psyche? Today, the commies have morphed into: Al Kaeda Everywhere, under the ubiquitous and pervasive - Global War on Terror.
Gen. Augusto Pinochet Ugarte, the brutal dictator who repressed and reshaped Chile for nearly two decades and became a notorious symbol of human rights abuse and corruption.
Friedman's, Chicago Boys, during the decade of the 70's, had already proven their greed based markets worked in test beds such as Chile and Argentina, but only through the process of 'Cleaning the Slate' through Shock and Torture, where hundreds of thousands were 'disappeared', along with U.S. - CIA and Corporate complicity.
Friedman himself was forced to admit that his free-market ideology does not fit comfortably within democratically established Societies - which is why the 'CULTURAL SLATE MUST BE ERASED' to make way for the new free-market religion, a medicinal cleansing is required. In Friedman's world - the architect of Reaganomics - Democracy and Free-Markets are a contradiction in terms; diametrically opposed and at odds with each other. Its results: a small elite grow far wealthier while large portions of what had been the working class are discarded from the economy althgether and turned into surplus people.
What should be even more worrisome is that Friedman style, free-market ideology was sold to the Chinese. The Chicago Boys having deemed Democracies as inhospitable to their formula for quenching insatiable greed, China certainly would prove quite the opposite. Just look at the praise it received via the, so called, Olympics. Look where the free-market multi-nationals tend to find attraction and tend to gravitate towards - China and Dubai.
'Operation Iraqi Freedom' should be seen in its true light, for what it really is, a Neoconic cleansing, or 'clearing of the slate' in preparation for Iraqi Friedman!!
See: Negorponte - The Death Squad Ambassador
A lot of folks have criticized, questioning Obama's character for having rubbed shoulders with folks from the same institution from which Freidman launched his bloody counter-revolution against New Deal policies. But what people don't bother to check is that Obama is completely anti-Friedmanism. Having infiltrated the den of vipers, having discovered the enemy’s strategy, Barack of all peoples is the only one poised to expose them, or at least use their own tools against them for the greater good. I can still hear Barack's words, ringing in my ears, calling for transparency. Although Barack may have brushed shoulders with Friedman's school of financial thugs, does not make him one.
Friedman, along with, Nixon’s Secretary of State, Kissinger should be pointed out for what they are: Criminals wanted for murder! In fact, if Kissinger were to set foot in certain areas of South America, he would immediately be arrested as such and he knows it, thereby forcing him to utilize his 'Free Market Miles' frugally.
**STOP** and get a copy of Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine - The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, read and re-read it while we await election day to arrive. Because, what Naomi brings to light within the pages of her expose, is precisely what WE are voting against in this election; decades of ruthless, predatory abuse of power, with greedy Corporatarch bottom-lines that are soaked with innocent blood, everywhere. Now, the chickens are coming home to roost.
Naomi does an excellent job in removing the haystack, exposing the piercing needle hidden within and explains everything.
Video of Naomi Klein speaking at the University of Chicago, invited by anti-Freidman group against erecting monument to Freidman. Naomi says each time Obama criticizes the current failed economic policies, his ratings shoot up.
Naomi Klein: Wall St. Crisis Should Be for Neoliberalism What Fall of Berlin Wall Was for Communism
Have we met our enemy yet? Or, are we still unable to see the forest for the trees?
Proper education and sunlight are the BEST disinfectants!
Peace, Best Wishes and Hope
http://transpolitical.blogspot.com/2008/08/race-card-you-aint-seen-nothin-yet.html
reprint 8/1/08 TransPolitical blog
“[Republicans] are desperate to win this election – there’s a lot at stake. And they’re going to say and do whatever they need to to get [re-]elected. … The Supreme Court’s at stake.”
Oh! “Buy a gun. And learn how to use it.”
This is a difficult blog to write, and I’m still mulling through how to process this information. One thing I’ve noticed over the years in politics: there are those who create chaos in order that they control and then make their own order out of that chaos.
Last summer, I read Al Gore's book, "Assault on Reason" and was blown away by his insight into the Bush administration's fear tactics. I had never been into politics until George W. Bush got into office. I now know what people living during the Vietnam War must have felt like -- living in this country during an unpopular war. The difference is, back then, the public knew exactly why this country was going to war: We were fighting against the spread of communism. Today's public, though, was tricked into supporting Bush and his war in Iraq by using fear tactics.
More and more, since I've read "AOR," I pay attention to the news and the farce that is continually perpetuated on the middle-class of this country. We didn't go to war because Iraq had weapons of mass destruction; we went to war so Bush could maintain his family's oil legacy and Cheney could get richer rewarding fat-cat contracts to his buddies at Haliburton. Oh, and so George W. could avenge his father's legacy and oust Saddam Hussein from his dictatorship in Iraq, since his daddy couldn't do it during the first Gulf War.
Bush and Cheney accomplished what they set out to achieve by using fear-mongering. If you remember, right before the his re-election, the homeland security raised the terror alerts to orange (for no valid reason). I could go on and on citing past examples, but I'll let you read "Assault on Reason" first (if you haven't already), followed by "The Shock Doctrine," by Naomi Klein. Both are excellent books for insight into how govements create fear and disaster to achieve a desired result. After reading "The Shock Doctrine," I'm more convinced than ever that the Bush administration subscribes to the Friedman rules of using shock and terror to affect the economy.
Obama, I believe, will lead this country back to the days of surplus and of the middle-class prospering (rather than drowning) in their own debt just to make ends meet. OBAMA 2008!
There have been many books chronicling the Bush administration's misleading of our country, whether it be into an illegal and unwise war whose costs have nearly bankrupted us and our reputation in the world community, or policies that have weakened our government's power to regulate in the public interest the enormous power of global corporations, while failing to allow health care for all Americans to pass the Congress.
Now comes The Shock Doctrine, a book that brings it all together for those of us who have long suspected a sinister worldwide force behind these neocon policies of the Republican party. "It is nothing less than the secret history of what we call the 'free market'. It should be compulsory reading. -Arundhati Roy
"Pulls the curtain back ...and exposes the forces that are really driving our economy" -Arianna Huffington From the Pinochet coup in Chile in 1973 to the Iraq war today, Naomi Klein shows how Milton Friedman's ideologues around the world and here in America have repeatedly used terrible shocks and violence to force on a numbed public their radical policies, the latest being the 2004 sunami in Sri Lanka, the 9/11 shock here, the hurricane in New Orleans, in Russia, the rise of the 'oligarchs'. There is a pattern to the implementation of this radical ideology: to privatize all public programs, like Social Security and Medicare, even public schools; to deregulate all activity of the corporations, and to take over the governments that should protect the public.
What has this got to do with the election of 2008? We need to see the big picture - it's not about personalities; it's about whether our America will fall victim to the radical Republican ideology that has already begun to weaken our government's power to reign in anti-public business practices like Enron's take over of electric power in the West, and recently, the financial manipulation of the mortgage market. It's about a foreign policy that is directed by corporations, and the military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned us to beware.
Yes, we need change in Washington! We need to get rid of the corporate influence, and make our government once again a government 'of the people, by the people, and for the people', not of the corporations and their 'free market' ideology, which in fact is not free at all but manipulated in the corporate interest.
The only way to begin to get our country back is to elect a Democratic Congress which is not beholden to immense power of money in this country and a President like Barack Obama who will make them honest representatives of us, the people and our interests.
Please read The Shock Doctrine, before it's too late.
