Kleins book the Shock Doctrine has been vilified by some as an overblown account of the corporate sectors final push for world domination. Yet Group 4 Securicors website proudly boasted last week that "Private sector involvement is needed to help governments to protect every nation’s critical national infrastructure".
"In her delusional, Manichaean world view, privatisation, free markets, private property, consumer freedom, the profit motive and economic freedom are just other terms for corporate self-enrichment, denial of voice, limitation of citizenship, inequality and, sometimes, even torture" Will Hutton, the Guardian
Klein details the rise of disaster capitalism as a complex driven by the shock doctrine. The idea is that disasters around the world have been exploited to introduce corporate-friendly policies which themselves have been used to induce further shocks to the collective capacity to reject the shift in power to the corporate state. In so-called democratic countries such as the UK and US the party system is used to obscure the fact that the common political platform shared by major parties is in fact the manifestation of a one party state. In turn, this state is being subsumed by the powerful new private security industry which is increasingly taking on work previously undertaken by the public sector. Accompanying the rise of this complex is total surveillance, the end of civil liberties and all that follows.
Yeah, yeah I here you say. We already knew that. This piece is not intended as a promotional tool for Kleins hefty and overpriced book- which my girlfriend bought me for my birthday. Nevertheless, what she is saying is important and whilst not to be taken as a theory of everything it does explain a lot.
For example, here are links to Group 4 Securicors website and accompanying PDF
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Zje1okUUVfIJ:www.g4s.com/home/+group+4&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk
http://www.g4s.com/international-sept07-protecting_whats_vital-11-13.pdf
From which I quote:
"David Taylor-Smith, CEO, G4S Security Services (UK & Ireland), explains the need for private sector involvement in helping governments to protect every nation’s critical national infrastructure.
Whether through terrorism or natural disasters, the world in the 21st century has already seen a series of severe events – 9/11, 7/7, Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, the 2007 UK floods among them – that have threatened the viability of communities and the infrastructure upon which they depend.
When a disaster strikes, we assume that it should be governments and their agencies that spring into action to provide essential services and infrastructure recovery, thereby restoring critical national infrastructure (CNI).
And whilst governments do prepare for such events – providing in many cases an excellent response – emergency services and armed forces are often stretched to their limits.
Meanwhile, of course, major private sector operators such as G4S have rapidly deployable resources across the globe and a major vested interest in helping to prevent and minimise the effects of CNI disruptions."
Critical national infrastructure includes communications, energy, food, water and government. So basically much within these sectors already privately owned is to be safeguarded by the new militias of G4S.
The crucial point to remember when considering Kleins analysis is that the new private security industries have come from nowhere to become multi-billion pound businesses. And of course, it being capitalism, they have to keep expanding. Moreover, in the context of climate change and conflict the opportunities for privatisation of these activities increases- in fact Private Security companies have an incentive to create and maintain permanent disaster
Taylor-Smith continues:
"Our principal message in such debates is that protecting CNI cannot remain the preserve of the public sector and that it is time for a root and branch re-think of the way we deal with protecting the nation from threats ranging from catastrophic natural events to terrorism.
This position as both CNI operator and protector puts G4S in a strong position to deliver real support to governments seeking to improve national resilience. In North America, we are already relied on to secure over 50 per cent of their commercial nuclear power stations and to protect high sensitivity sites such as the Pentagon and NASA. And, in Europe, we help protect the European Parliament and a growing list of major airports.
So, G4S and others have shown the very real benefits of using private companies to provide CNI-related services previously thought of as the exclusive domain of the public sector.
At G4S, though, we know that a great deal more is possible. In many circumstances, the private sector’s flexible, international resources are superior to those owned by individual governments. So G4S is busy establishing ways to drive greater private sector involvement wherever it is appropriate.
In recent weeks, for example, we’ve been setting out ideas for new legislation and regulations to create obligations on private companies to protect the CNI they bid to operate.
We also believe that, with the pressure on Government agencies to produce ever more accurate and pre-emptive intelligence, private sector organisations like G4S, with its international network, offer new avenues to provide appropriate intelligence, often much more quickly than individual nations can achieve. After all, the private sector has been using security consultancies to provide business intelligence for many years."
Errr, hello, I think hes trying to tell us something.
"And, in August, G4S went further still by launching a unique UK-based surge force of highly skilled ex-British service men and women, capable of deployment across the UK at short notice, to augment government and company resources in an emergency.
Of course, private sector involvement in CNI protection begs the question of who pays.
G4S believes that in most instances the consumer should pay if the cost of delivering critical services increases through additional protection costs. This point is already well established in the aviation industry, where costs are passed on to flying customers.
Also, the principal of paying for local and national emergency and armed services in taxes provides a ready mechanism to pass on costs to the public."
So are G4S in line to become the British Military Junta? It sounds like it to me. The question then becomes what to do about it. Klein suggests that for those who have been shocked into accepting the corporate takeover the effect will soon wear off. Prior to the Iranian revolution the West was puzzled as to why women weren't fighting harder for their rights- eventually they did by joining in comon cause with religious leaders and labour activists to topple the Shah. For many women, it became more important to tackle this dictatorship than fight for individual rights.
Of course the revolutions aftermath created an environment in which women continued to be subordinated. However, a major cause of this was the way the new government adopted a stance which sought to undermine and liquidate the popular societies that had come together to challenge the state. There is a common thread in all revolutions from the US to Iran whereby popular societies have formed before or during the revolutionary struggle to democratically participate in affairs concerning them. Yet those with vested interests in party politics whether single or multi have always sought to strip these societies of their power. In the UK we already have these societies activated as ongoing campaigns but frequently we find ourselves herded into single issue campaigns. Is the time not come for us to unite around a comon purpose of taking down representative democracy to replace it with a system of networked groups so that all can participate in sustainable government?
Klein details the rise of disaster capitalism as a complex driven by the shock doctrine. The idea is that disasters around the world have been exploited to introduce corporate-friendly policies which themselves have been used to induce further shocks to the collective capacity to reject the shift in power to the corporate state. In so-called democratic countries such as the UK and US the party system is used to obscure the fact that the common political platform shared by major parties is in fact the manifestation of a one party state. In turn, this state is being subsumed by the powerful new private security industry which is increasingly taking on work previously undertaken by the public sector. Accompanying the rise of this complex is total surveillance, the end of civil liberties and all that follows.
Yeah, yeah I here you say. We already knew that. This piece is not intended as a promotional tool for Kleins hefty and overpriced book- which my girlfriend bought me for my birthday. Nevertheless, what she is saying is important and whilst not to be taken as a theory of everything it does explain a lot.
For example, here are links to Group 4 Securicors website and accompanying PDF
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Zje1okUUVfIJ:www.g4s.com/home/+group+4&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=uk http://www.g4s.com/international-sept07-protecting_whats_vital-11-13.pdf From which I quote:
"David Taylor-Smith, CEO, G4S Security Services (UK & Ireland), explains the need for private sector involvement in helping governments to protect every nation’s critical national infrastructure.
Whether through terrorism or natural disasters, the world in the 21st century has already seen a series of severe events – 9/11, 7/7, Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami, the 2007 UK floods among them – that have threatened the viability of communities and the infrastructure upon which they depend.
When a disaster strikes, we assume that it should be governments and their agencies that spring into action to provide essential services and infrastructure recovery, thereby restoring critical national infrastructure (CNI).
And whilst governments do prepare for such events – providing in many cases an excellent response – emergency services and armed forces are often stretched to their limits.
Meanwhile, of course, major private sector operators such as G4S have rapidly deployable resources across the globe and a major vested interest in helping to prevent and minimise the effects of CNI disruptions."
Critical national infrastructure includes communications, energy, food, water and government. So basically much within these sectors already privately owned is to be safeguarded by the new militias of G4S.
The crucial point to remember when considering Kleins analysis is that the new private security industries have come from nowhere to become multi-billion pound businesses. And of course, it being capitalism, they have to keep expanding. Moreover, in the context of climate change and conflict the opportunities for privatisation of these activities increases- in fact Private Security companies have an incentive to create and maintain permanent disaster
Taylor-Smith continues:
"Our principal message in such debates is that protecting CNI cannot remain the preserve of the public sector and that it is time for a root and branch re-think of the way we deal with protecting the nation from threats ranging from catastrophic natural events to terrorism.
This position as both CNI operator and protector puts G4S in a strong position to deliver real support to governments seeking to improve national resilience. In North America, we are already relied on to secure over 50 per cent of their commercial nuclear power stations and to protect high sensitivity sites such as the Pentagon and NASA. And, in Europe, we help protect the European Parliament and a growing list of major airports.
So, G4S and others have shown the very real benefits of using private companies to provide CNI-related services previously thought of as the exclusive domain of the public sector.
At G4S, though, we know that a great deal more is possible. In many circumstances, the private sector’s flexible, international resources are superior to those owned by individual governments. So G4S is busy establishing ways to drive greater private sector involvement wherever it is appropriate.
In recent weeks, for example, we’ve been setting out ideas for new legislation and regulations to create obligations on private companies to protect the CNI they bid to operate.
We also believe that, with the pressure on Government agencies to produce ever more accurate and pre-emptive intelligence, private sector organisations like G4S, with its international network, offer new avenues to provide appropriate intelligence, often much more quickly than individual nations can achieve. After all, the private sector has been using security consultancies to provide business intelligence for many years."
Errr, hello, I think hes trying to tell us something.
"And, in August, G4S went further still by launching a unique UK-based surge force of highly skilled ex-British service men and women, capable of deployment across the UK at short notice, to augment government and company resources in an emergency.
Of course, private sector involvement in CNI protection begs the question of who pays.
G4S believes that in most instances the consumer should pay if the cost of delivering critical services increases through additional protection costs. This point is already well established in the aviation industry, where costs are passed on to flying customers.
Also, the principal of paying for local and national emergency and armed services in taxes provides a ready mechanism to pass on costs to the public."
So are G4S in line to become the British Military Junta? It sounds like it to me. The question then becomes what to do about it. Klein suggests that for those who have been shocked into accepting the corporate takeover the effect will soon wear off. Prior to the Iranian revolution the West was puzzled as to why women weren't fighting harder for their rights- eventually they did by joining in comon cause with religious leaders and labour activists to topple the Shah. For many women, it became more important to tackle this dictatorship than fight for individual rights.
Of course the revolutions aftermath created an environment in which women continued to be subordinated. However, a major cause of this was the way the new government adopted a stance which sought to undermine and liquidate the popular societies that had come together to challenge the state. There is a common thread in all revolutions from the US to Iran whereby popular societies have formed before or during the revolutionary struggle to democratically participate in affairs concerning them. Yet those with vested interests in party politics whether single or multi have always sought to strip these societies of their power. In the UK we already have these societies activated as ongoing campaigns but frequently we find ourselves herded into single issue campaigns. Is the time not come for us to unite around a comon purpose of taking down representative democracy to replace it with a system of networked groups so that all can participate in sustainable government?