Saturday, June 27, 2009

Naomi Klein on Media Matters

The podcast Media Matters with Bob McChesney is political commentary radio program with (frequently) listeners calling in. The most recent edition had Canadian writer and social critic Naomi Klein in the studio.

Klein gets the opportunity to voice her fierce criticism of modern free market criticism. As already pointed out in her book 'The shock doctrine' which describes what she terms 'Disaster Capitalism' - money making thrives with crises. In her book, the disaster caused by hurricane Katrina is used as an example. In the studio, she goes to show how the current financial disaster works just likewise. A private market crisis is being transformed into a public crisis with all the bail out programs.

What this boils down to is that the capitalists do not have to pay for their mistakes, but manage to pass the hot potato through to the government. That means the tax payer, the public budget and eventually the weakest pay the price. And rich speculators can go on taking huge risks. And thus, capitalism, this unrestrained capitalism, thrives by crises. The excitement and expectations about Obama, have obscured this fact in the US, but in other countries, she claims, the injustice is observed more clearly.

More Media Matters:
Noam Chomsky,
Juan Cole,
The Crisis.

More Naomi Klein:
Naomi Klein on Big Ideas.

2 comments:

Kateveg said...

Thanks for posting this - I'm really looking forward to it. I've listened to Naomi Klein on CSPAN and she's sharp as hell.

I wasn't too thrilled with the Chomsky interview - yes, he's a fascinating important voice - but his absolute dismissal of any interpretation of reality other than his own is just so off-putting and so at odds with the level of his thinking. I'd like to see his friends - like Bob McChesney - challenge him on it - but they never do. They just enable him to stay in permanent pontification mode.

Anne the Man said...

Hi Kateveg,

I agree with you and I would add that I found Naomi Klein on Big Ideas better than on Media Matters.

Anne