I wasn’t able to attend Naomi Klein’s recent speech at the University of Western Ontario, but I did hear her interviewed twice on radio, picked up her new book The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, and went online to view the short film made to accompany the book. Based on this, I have little doubt that, in its pessimism, the tone of Klein’s address rivaled that brought to the recent National Farmers Union (NFU) annual convention by western Canadian journalist Andrew Nikiforuk –- in an address which I did hear.
Nikiforuk is promoting Pandemonium: Bird Flu, Mad Cow Disease and Other Biological Plagues of the 21st Century. The book, in large part, examines the responses of various national governments to perceived threats of trade-disrupting disease outbreaks in agriculturally-significant livestock.
Nikiforuk’s contention is that ill-informed and sometimes deliberately misdirected responses invariably result in the economic power of agriculture becoming concentrated in the hands of fewer and fewer people.
Speaking about England’s Foot and Mouth Disease (FMD) outbreak in 2001, Nikiforuk told an audience of about 250 NFU members that “this is a disease with a one per cent mortality rate for animals . . . Treatment of the blisters on these animals will do the trick. (But) the British took a different approach (because officials felt) trade is God.”
Instead of systematic vaccination, as other nations had undertaken, he suggested London’s response was to have “the largest barbecue in English history.” Then, after putting up a slide of a stereotypical pyre of burning carcasses that we became accustomed to during the FMD crisis and saw all over again –- magnified -– during England’s Mad Cow Disease crisis, Nikiforuk quelled some scattered chuckling and made it clear he meant no humour in the remark.
He characterized the response as one of “lies, spin, incompetence, cruelty and waste,” and characterized the result as “the Rwanda for sheep.”
According to the Alberta-based journalist, 720,000 animals were blood- tested for FMD. There were 337 positive tests. Yet over 10 million were killed. “1.6 million were killed simply because no one could get to them to feed them because quarantines were in effect.”
“The rural economy of England was toast.” Over 30,000 farmers were put out of business. About 300 committed suicide “so England could regain its status as being FMD-free. There was nothing rational about this. It was totally irrational. It was globalization run amok.”
The parallels to Klein’s latest work are obvious. In The Shock Doctrine, the internationally-recognized darling of the anti-globalization movement puts forward argument after argument in support of her premise: that many free market economists consciously harness the public uncertainty created by major crises to advance their dream of a fully globalized economic regime.
To support her premise, she draws repeatedly on statements made by former top US presidential advisor Milton Friedman, whom she identifies as the true
founder of the strategy. “Friedman understood that, just as prisoners are
softened up for interrogation by the shock of their capture, natural
disasters could serve to soften us up for his radical free market crusade,”
she says in the short online film. “He advised politicians that immediately
after a crisis, they should push through all the painful policies at once
before people could regain their footing. He called this method ‘economic
shock treatment.’”
In the book, Klein crisscrosses the globe citing what she argues are
examples of this strategy.
There’s the emergence of for-profit schools –- operating with their own
rules and with their own hiring policies –- as the infrastructure of New
Orleans is rebuilt after Hurricane Katrina, replacing publicly funded
schools staffed by teachers with what many believe is a broader perspective
on the world. There are corporate tourism interests rebuilding the
tsunami-ravaged coastline of Sri Lanka, preventing former residents from
reclaiming their livelihoods. There are Kremlin-backed business bullies
having their way in Russia, beyond the reproach of a populace in shock over
economic reforms and terrorist threats. China was transformed into the
low-cost supplier of goods to the world in the wake of a government-led
massacre of protesters. And in Latin America over the decades, government
social spending was drastically reduced while people recovered from the
shock of extreme inflation, colonial-style war or dictator-led
“disappearances.”
“This is the secret history of the free market. It wasn’t borne of freedom
and democracy. It was borne of shock,” Klein argues in the short film.
It’s all pretty pessimistic stuff. And that’s partly because neither Klein
nor Nikiforuk deny the existence of various crises or disasters. Nikiforuk,
especially, argues the world is increasingly prone to such shock, in the
form of what he calls “biological bombs” that might be unleashed as disease
organisms adapt to economically-driven but ultimately inadequate responses
to natural crises.
They do, however, offer alternative solutions. Klein’s vision of a response,
outlined in The Shock Doctrine’s final chapter, draws heavily on the changes
that have taken place in Latin America over the past decade, with the
election of leaders who are skeptical of the globalization message. Measures
taken by these political movements include, she writes, “nationalization of
key sectors of the economy, land reform, major new investments in education,
literacy and health care.”
The problem for Klein is that the most prominent of those pushing such
changes has been Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, a man who has undertaken with
equal zeal to get under the skin of the United States administration just
for the notoriety. In so doing, he courts photo opportunities with unabashed
Iranian despots, embarrasses the harmless King of Spain, and falls over
himself treating Fidel Castro as God.
Luckily for Nikiforuk, his target for alternative solutions is much more
restricted. Attacks must be launched at the root causes of biological
threats, he advises, including the confinement of thousands of
genetically-similar livestock in small spaces, the over-stressing of
livestock through excessive transportation, the creation of ideal
disease-propagating environments in concentrated slaughtering facilities,
and the overuse of antibiotics to counter the diseases.
Changing such entrenched practices is a tall order. But maybe not as tall as
Klein’s vision.
Then again, if Chavez gets drummed out of Venezuela in the next few years,
maybe the NFU could draft him to take up agriculture’s anti-globalization
challenge. He –- like Klein herself -– certainly knows how to attract
attention to the cause.