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RedditThe Red Cross has just announced a new disaster-response partnership with Wal-Mart. When the next hurricane hits, it will be a co-production of Big Aid and Big Box.
Naomi Klein's book on disaster capitalism will be published in Spring 2007.
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Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
Naomi Klein: As the planet is rocked by multiple shocks, here's a look at how disaster capitalists are reaping the benefits--leveraging the Iraq War, the push for arctic drilling and the global food crisis.
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Movin' On Down
Patricia J. Williams: Loan-sharking has resurged with global force, cutting across class, race and regions: we're all in the ghetto now.
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Blackwater's Private Spies
Jeremy Scahill: The notorious mercenary firm is now a one-stop shop for security outsourcing, offering CIA-like services to Fortune 500 companies.
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Regime-Quakes in Burma and China
Naomi Klein: Nothing terrifies a repressive regime more than a natural disaster.
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Contract Justice
Jeremy Scahill: An Iraqi translator is prosecuted and Blackwater has its contract renewed for another year, armed and dangerous in Baghdad.
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Blackwater Seeps Into the Campaign
Jeremy Scahill: Clinton and Obama each have nuanced plans to ban private security firms from Iraq. The difference is how they're spinning them.
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Blackwater, the Campaign Issue
Jeremy Scahill & VideoNation : In this interview with RealNews, Nation Correspondent Jeremy Scahill explains how Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama differ on the use of private security contractors in Iraq.
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Disaster Capitalism: State of Extortion
Naomi Klein: As the planet is rocked by multiple shocks, here's a look at how disaster capitalists are reaping the benefits--leveraging the Iraq War, the push for arctic drilling and the global food crisis.
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Obama's Chicago Boys
Naomi Klein: Before Obama can transform the economy, he has some housecleaning to do.
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Regime-Quakes in Burma and China
Naomi Klein: Nothing terrifies a repressive regime more than a natural disaster.
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Obama, Being Called a Muslim Is Not a Smear
Naomi Klein: He should denounce the attacks themselves as racist propaganda.
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Disowned by the Ownership Society
Naomi Klein: Bush turns out to be the undertaker of the free market's false promises to ordinary Americans.
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Zapatista Code Red
Naomi Klein: Ten years after the massacre of indigenous people in Chiapas, Zapatistas are reading signs that the Mexican government is poised for another wave of repression.
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Guns Beat Green: The Market Has Spoken
Naomi Klein: If you're looking for a sure bet in the new growth market, sell solar and buy surveillance. Forget wind, buy weapons.
"It's all going to be private enterprise before it's over," Billy Wagner, emergency management chief for the Florida Keys, currently under hurricane watch for Tropical Storm Ernesto, said in April. "They've got the expertise. They've got the resources."
But before this new consensus goes any further, perhaps it's time to take a look at where the privatization of disaster began, and where it will inevitably lead.
The first step was the government's abdication of its core responsibility to protect the population from disasters. Under the Bush administration, whole sectors of the government, most notably the Department of Homeland Security, have been turned into glorified temp agencies, with essential functions contracted out to private companies. The theory is that entrepreneurs, driven by the profit motive, are always more efficient (please suspend hysterical laughter).
We saw the results in New Orleans one year ago: Washington was frighteningly weak and inept, in part because its emergency management experts had fled to the private sector and its technology and infrastructure had become positively retro. At least by comparison, the private sector looked modern and competent (a New York Times columnist even suggested handing FEMA over to Wal-Mart).
But the honeymoon doesn't last long. "Where has all the money gone?" ask desperate people from Baghdad to New Orleans, from Kabul to tsunami-struck Sri Lanka. One place a great deal of it has gone is into major capital expenditures for these private contractors. Largely under the public radar, billions of taxpayer dollars have been spent on the construction of a privatized disaster-response infrastructure: the Shaw Group's new state-of-the-art Baton Rouge headquarters, Bechtel's battalions of earthmoving equipment, Blackwater USA's 6,000-acre campus in North Carolina (complete with paramilitary training camp and 6,000-foot runway).
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