the most relevent book in our modern economic and political history. read this and you will understand everything in yesterday, today and tomorrows headlines.

Naomi Klein's frightening and dead honest and impecible researched explains the past and the current of the incredible unethical and immoral behavior of those in power in the Administration today and linking it with the situations, that I have first hand knowledge of in Chile, where the engineered kidnapping, slaughter, torturer of Chilean citizens was done by Kissinger and Nixon, following the outlandishly immoral and unethical and always failed, sick thoughts of Milton Freidman. The scariest part is the Bush/Cheney and his band of Anti-American, Pro-terrorist actions are doing to the U.S. what they aer doing to Iraq and have to do many countries in South America. Fortunately Chile through out Pinochet and Chicago boys and restored a democracy with the last two remarkable Presidents were people who were tortured by the U.S. trained Chilian military of Pinochet.
Thr torture and bombing with "shock and awe" in Iraq, is the same thing that was done in Chile and in Argentina, Brazil and for the first time, in t he U.S. by ouor own administration. The intention economy rotting deficit spending, offshoring of all of ouor manufacturing, the expanding gap between the haves and have nots, destruction of the middle class, 20 bilion a month on Iraq and privitizing the military (180,000 mercenaries), the recovery effort for profit by Haliburton (who still have Cheney on its payroll). They did NOT expect Iraquis to fight back.
We are getting the same "shock and awe" treatment by destroying the economy, the illegal spying on U.S. citizen, BY THE U.S, itself, the creation of a fascist Corpocracy. Destruction of public education. Listen to the neo com/neoliberal mombling of old man McCain about cutting social prograns, which we need more of, BUT to never cut feeding of our taxpayer money to war contractors. The worthlessness of the dollar.
Same, same, same. It has failed horrible every place else, and will keep failing as pure unadulterated evil should fail.

Incredible book. Heck, you can just look at the declassified documents at the library of Congress to see about Nixon/Kissinger's intent for the Corporate takeover of a long time democracy in Chile.

Jon

This is a must read for anyone who wants to know what our government does to other countries in the name of corporate profit. It's an eye opener.

I was just finishing this book as the republican candidate for president was announcing his plan to solve the gasoline tax crisis with a repeal of the gas tax for the summer. This tax is dedicated to transportation infrastructure. He is on record for making the Bush tax cuts to the wealthy permanent while the costs of the Iraq war are estimated at three
trillion and the paper held by Japan and China. His solution for all this deficit is to cut spending elsewhere rather than to pay for war as we go.
This is the same game plan explained in this book used from Chile to
Katrina. Manufacture or exploit a crisis and privatize legitimate government functions as a government is weakened.

Unlike Naomi Klein who is Canadian I was born and raised in Argentina (were i lived for the past 30 years).

In regards to my countrys experience during it's last dictartorship, Naomi Klein has embraced what in Argentina is often called as "the Official Lie". This is, the dominant dogma imposed by the leftist (now in power) propaganda, that maintains that the decline of our country began the 24 of March of 1976 at hands of a dictartorship who took control of the country and imposed through blood and fire a "neoliberal model". For Klein this has been the ultimate goal of the dictatorship (and the "reasons" behind the "dissapeared").

These are fairy tails propagated by the left propaganda machinery (which is admirable). But nothing could be far from the truth.

The assumption of the military dictatorship in the year 76' did not take place through a violent assault of political power (there was no a single shot fired) but like an "agreement" between the whole political arc and the military "cupulas". The first impelled the military to "take control" due to its incapacity to remove the country from the economic and social chaos in which it was submerged.

From Ricardo Balbín (representing "radicalismo" o "UCR"...the other major political party besides "Partido Justicialista" o "Peronismo"), to Lorenzo Miguel (representing the sindicalists), to the own Peronists party (whom they didnt's want to throw the widow of Perón as a last resort through a political judgment)...thay all requested the militarys to taker over . This "feeling" was shared by major part (not all) of the Argentine society.

The context in which the military cupula emerged was devastating: inflation, shortages (after several months of price controls), prohibitions of meat consumes, ungovernability and a bloody civil war initiated by Marxist terrorism several years ago. The eight (8) Ministers that occupied the Economic Chair in the last year and a half of the Isabel Perón's administration is just an example of the dramatic economic collapse that was sinking the country down to anarchy.

A fundamental and crucial point to understand "why" the main political actors had requested and begged the military cupula to take over, is to understand that Argentina came suffering from late Sixties the violent driving of Marxist terrorism that politicians couldn't and wouldn't put to an end (mainly due to incompetence and fear).

Note: The reader can find an analogy to the argentine experience of the 70's in what's going on right now with the FARC's (narco-guerrilla) in Colombia. Note II: The narco-guerrillas are now being supported by the dictator Hugo Chavez and by Naomi Klein aswell (who also support FARC's, Hugo Chavez and Nazi Evo Morles, this last one advocating "Indian supremacy"). In Argentina we respond to these situations saying "God creates them, and the devil accumulates them".

It is necessary to emphasize that this drive by marxist terrorism was being framed at the time within a more general program of armed warfare in all the continent. What was later called the "export of the Cuban revolution" to the rest of Latin America.

The ultimate goal of the Marxist terrorism that spread through Argentina and great part of Latin America was the taking of the political power (government) by means of guerrilla war. This objective was shaped in the General Declaration of the OLAS gathering (Organización Latinoamiercana de Solidaridad) that took place the 10 of August of 1967 (presided by the very same Ernesto "Che" Guevara) where it was settled down that:

"The immediate goal of the popular revolution in the continent is the taking of the power by means of the destruction of the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the state and it's replacement by the popular guerrillas to change the existing social and economic regime. This objective is only attainable through the armed warfare ". More ahead this document also maintains that: "the guerrilla war, as genuine expression of the popular armed warfare, is the most effective method and the best form to wage war and to develop revolutionary war in most of our countries and consequently, in continental scale".

I didn't read Naomi complaining about this "shock" treatment. It would be interesting to read Noami's comments about this model imposition by our leftist camaradas.

This drive by marxist terrorism was understandable, since the Armed Forces were the only institutional containment to restrain the revolutionary outpost. Once the military apparatus was destroyed the taking of the political power occurred in addition (something obvious, since ¿what other institution besides the military could stop the advance of these armed groups?).

(I belive...)These data is sufficient to understand two crucial points of the phenomenon thas was the "subversion" (guerrilla) in Argentina: (1) that a (civil) war was taking place at the time (of revolutionary character and on continental scale), and (2) that the aggresion was first initiated by such guerrilla detachments as a previous step towards its objective of taking of the political power (by means of the armed warfare) to impose the "socialist or colectivist nirvana".

This is the context in which the Armed Forces assumed the political power in Argentina in 1976.

The military repression was an institutional answer (preceded by presidential decrees) to deal with the phenomenon of revolutionary terrorism and the collapse of political institutions.

The reality is that in Argentina there was no imposition of an economic model. As an example of this statement the own military cupola confessed in several occasions before assuming that they were not prepared to take over since "they lacked" a government plan. ¿How they could impose an non-existing economic plan?

Finally there is a fundamental point that "not-Argentineans" readers should take into account (and that serves to show the lies of Naomi Klein):

During the seven years of dictatorship there was not a single privatization of state companies. Zero!

These privatizations were made 17 years later, under a Peronist government and as a consecuence of the economic emergency caused by the monumental fiscal déficits that these companies had accumulated during the government of Alfonsin (83-89), which represented nearly 3.5% of the GDP.

How can Naomi Klein explain us that under the supposed neoliberal model of the 70's one cannot find not a single privatization of state companies, not a single tax cut, and contrary to her statements the state fiscal deficit has climbed, as much in absolute terms as in % of the GDP (from 2% in 76 to 6% in 82)?

The history of my country shall not be distorted.

(Part II)

A fundamental and crucial point to understand "why" the main political actors had requested and begged the military cupula to take over, is to understand that Argentina came suffering from late Sixties the violent driving of Marxist terrorism that politicians couldn't and wouldn't put to an end (mainly due to incompetence and fear).

Note: The reader can find an analogy to the argentine experience of the 70's in what's going on right now with the FARC's (narco-guerrilla) in Colombia. Note II: The narco-guerrillas are now being supported by the dictator Hugo Chavez and by Naomi Klein aswell (who also support FARC's, Hugo Chavez and Nazi Evo Morles, this last one advocating "Indian supremacy"). In Argentina we respond to these situations saying "God creates them, and the devil accumulates them".

It is necessary to emphasize that this drive by marxist terrorism was being framed at the time within a more general program of armed warfare in all the continent. What was later called the "export of the Cuban revolution" to the rest of Latin America.

The ultimate goal of the Marxist terrorism that spread through Argentina and great part of Latin America was the taking of the political power (government) by means of guerrilla war. This objective was shaped in the General Declaration of the OLAS gathering (Organización Latinoamiercana de Solidaridad) that took place the 10 of August of 1967 (presided by the very same Ernesto "Che" Guevara) where it was settled down that:

"The immediate goal of the popular revolution in the continent is the taking of the power by means of the destruction of the bureaucratic-military apparatus of the state and it's replacement by the popular guerrillas to change the existing social and economic regime. This objective is only attainable through the armed warfare ". More ahead this document also maintains that: "the guerrilla war, as genuine expression of the popular armed warfare, is the most effective method and the best form to wage war and to develop revolutionary war in most of our countries and consequently, in continental scale".

I didn't read Naomi complaining about this "shock" treatment. It would be interesting to read Noami's comments about this model imposition by our leftist camaradas.

This drive by marxist terrorism was understandable, since the Armed Forces were the only institutional containment to restrain the revolutionary outpost. Once the military apparatus was destroyed the taking of the political power occurred in addition (something obvious, since ¿what other institution besides the military could stop the advance of these armed groups?).

(I belive...)These data is sufficient to understand two crucial points of the phenomenon thas was the "subversion" (guerrilla) in Argentina: (1) that a (civil) war was taking place at the time (of revolutionary character and on continental scale), and (2) that the aggresion was first initiated by such guerrilla detachments as a previous step towards its objective of taking of the political power (by means of the armed warfare) to impose the "socialist or colectivist nirvana".

This is the context in which the Armed Forces assumed the political power in Argentina in 1976.

The military repression was an institutional answer (preceded by presidential decrees) to deal with the phenomenon of revolutionary terrorism and the collapse of political institutions.

The reality is that in Argentina there was no imposition of an economic model. As an example of this statement the own military cupola confessed in several occasions before assuming that they were not prepared to take over since "they lacked" a government plan. ¿How they could impose an non-existing economic plan?

Finally there is a fundamental point that "not-Argentineans" readers should take into account (and that serves to show the lies of Naomi Klein):

During the seven years of dictatorship there was not a single privatization of state companies. Zero!

These privatizations were made 17 years later, under a Peronist government and as a consecuence of the economic emergency caused by the monumental fiscal déficits that these companies had accumulated during the government of Alfonsin (83-89), which represented nearly 3.5% of the GDP.

How can Naomi Klein explain us that under the supposed neoliberal model of the 70's one cannot find not a single privatization of state companies, not a single tax cut, and contrary to her statements the state fiscal deficit has climbed, as much in absolute terms as in % of the GDP (from 2% in 76 to 6% in 82)?

The history of my country shall not be distorted.

This book was a huge disappointment for me. The author's crime? The author is clearly biased and/or has an agenda, and thus loses all journalistic credibility. The tragedy is the author's topic deserves legitimacy. I gave her two stars because she tackled some difficult issues and topics that needed to brought the public conscious.

I got the sense the author was withholding information/facts that opposed her agenda. On the flipside, I felt that she portrayed just enough information or rearranged information to further her biased argument.

Case in point is her chapter on Poland. For the whole chapter on Poland, she reports very little information on the previous Communist government. She spends significant amount of the chapter on what the government was like after Communism fell. She goes into length of the outcomes that resulted from the strategy and policy implemented by the new government. When reading these outcomes by themselves, they seem down right awful. In reality, these outcomes "may" indeed have been horrendous! But...

She reports very little on what the government was like before Communism. She goes into little depth of the outcomes that resulted from the strategy and policy implemented by Communist government.

How can we judge if something is better or worse without comparing? Please forgive the simple anecdote - The only reason I have had a good meal is because I have a bad meal - I hope you get the point.

On page 175, in the Chapter on Poland, she writes: "The Communist had been mismanaging the economy for decades, make one disastrous, expensive mistake after another, and it was at the point of collapse." Besides a few more sentences (five at the max) on the Poland during communism, the whole chapter, pages 171 to 193, are devoted to what happened immediately after communism fell. This is not fair reporting.

Another crime, the author performs zero reporting on the current status of the Poland economy. How can you make no mention of the current Poland economy? Again, not fair reporting.

Lastly, the author at times takes cheap shots at some of subjects in her book. If deserved or not, if true or not, they have no place in a journalistic book.

There have been boatloads of books complaining about what's going wrong with economic equality and political power in the world today. This substantial and eye-opening investigation by Naomi Klein easily rises above the pack by constructing a robust political/economic thesis based on easily available sources and historical lessons learned. Klein's theoretical construction is sometimes a stretch (such as the supposed spiritual link between shock therapy in psychiatry and the imposition of economic liberalization on the Third World), and she occasionally lets polemics overtake her arguments.

Regardless, this book is a powerhouse of economic investigation and an analysis of deep-seated political trends, showing that economic neoliberalism is not a doctrine but an ideology that brings the same suffering and inequality that comes with all forcibly-imposed governmental systems. Free marketeers, inspired by the late and lionized Milton Friedman, are intellectually and politically unable to see their philosophy's weaknesses and automatically eliminate (politically, and sometimes physically) all who disagree. Just like any unyielding ideology, neoliberalism is self-reinforcing, closed to critique, and convinced of its own infallibility.

As Klein shows, there is absolutely no evidence that neoliberalism has been popularly welcomed by any nation's peoples. Instead it has been forced onto unwilling populations by foreign economic institutions and corporate leaders, usually in times of crisis. The result has been the financial and political ruination of several countries, accomplished with the rhetoric of spreading American-style "democracy" and "freedom." But what has really been spread is the right of multinational conglomerates to unregulated profits. This is a travesty of both democracy and capitalism, neither of which has been delivered to the populations that had so-called "free market" systems forced upon them by a network of extreme economic ideologues.

To this book's critics who can only see the world through black-and-white ideological frames: Klein is not condemning capitalism, which is no longer the American economic system, regardless of what pocket-stuffing politicians tell you. Here Klein delivers a devastating condemnation of what is more accurately called corporatism, the unequal and undemocratic mutation of pure capitalism that is now our lot in life, thanks to plutocratic ideologues who enrich themselves while trying to convince those left behind of how "free" they are. We're next. [~doomsdayer520~]

I looked forward to reading Naomi Klein's "The Shock Doctrine" because I thought it would explain why the last quarter century's triumph of free market economics has caused so much hardship. Her thesis is compelling; she argues that back in the seventies, governments working with Chicago School (read Milton Friedman) exploited or instigated a "shock" that served as an excuse or tool to raid the underclasses economic and political protections and to transfer that wealth to fund the expansion of corporate control and growth to the immense gain of the powerful and wealthy. She shows how this was done in countries such as Chile, Argentina, Poland, Russia, South Africa, the UK, the US and Iraq.

She makes a couple of important points. First, that the idea that political freedom creates the conditions necessary for economic freedom or the reverse is nonsense. And that governments are easily persuaded to throw the vast majority of its citizens under the bus in order to stimulate corporate growth favoring the rich all the while claiming it will trickle down to everyone.

But she frequently over-reaches her evidence and implies connections that she doesn't prove. Klein only examines the Chicago school economics from the standpoint of its political goals; anti-Keynesian and anti-development. Her summary of the their economic theories is extremely reductive and dismissive. Its as if she is saying that engaging their economic ideas isn't important because she is only interested their impact. But it made this reader believe she never made a good faith effort to understand any of their ideas.

Even worse, she starts the book with a chapter that explains how the CIA funded a psychiatrist, Dr. Ewen Cameron, to perform tortuous experiments on his patients that produced a shock in his victims so as to make them psychologically helpless. This chapter is meant metaphorically as a way to show how this process could happen on a societal scale. Her next chapter as a way of introducing Friedman and the Chicago School is entitled, "The Other Doctor Shock." The implication being that Friedman was responsible for political repression and violence that the regimes he counseled inflicted on their citizens. Yet for proof she points only to his defensiveness when critics made this claim about his economic policies.

I'm not a fan of Friedman or the Chicago school but I don't think that "The Shock Dotrine" plays fair. If she has evidence that part of their economic agenda was political repression then Klein needs to produce it. If not, then drop the "shock and torture" language. The related problem which stems from her cavalier treatment of economics is that the national examples she uses are very different in many ways and yet she reduces complex historical, economic and political events to the same pattern; the imposition of radical, free market economics through a "shock" that destroys the society's safety net and throws the majority of citizens into economic hardship. I don't know the histories of all these countries but her reductive approach feels like she is more interested in proving her point than in being honest about the facts.

This book is an eye-opener and provides a treasure of information about modern social-economic history since the 1950's. The book is extremely well researched and the author explains her vision on the tensions between social democracy and free market capitalism; the role of American imperialism during the past 50th years and disastrous consequences that it had for millions of people around the world. Although I perceived the book as consistent and well formulated, I also heard comments that some of the arguments are flawed. With almost 600 pages, it is a real challenge to read the book cover-to-cover : nevertheless, I found every chapter very rich in information and satisfying to read.
Definitely recommended.

An outstanding piece of analysis. Well researched. If one want to really understand why "there were no mistakes" once the US illegally invaded and occupied Iraq, then read this book. The destruction of the Iraqi state, the trauma and destruction served on the the Iraq society was the plan not a mistake. Klein provides the theoretical, political, and practical underpinning for what happened in Iraq, the Palestinian territories, Chile and many other places.

A real milestone work

After skimming the book and paying careful attention to the CDs of same, it appears that the American people have indeed earned the title "We, the Sheeple". If Naomi Klien is even 50% accurate in what seems to be a very well documented review of Disaster Capitalism, we've been spectacularly "rope-a-doped" by the team of our top government officials and corporate adventurism. Apparently, we've been bludgeoned under the radar.....or maybe we were too frightened to allow ourselves to see. Now, before we once again exercise our one chance to make real changes in a democracy, we'd better open our eyes and our minds.

This is literally a life-changing book. After reading it, one's view of the world is changed forever, and the world suddenly makes sense in a way it never did before. What was inexplicable suddenly comes into sharp focus, and random evil now has a purpose and goal, and with that understanding comes the possibility of change.

The book is about the Chicago School of Economics and its guru, Milton Friedman, and their effect on the world. Friedman advocated radically free markets. He called such markets pure, and stated that any government interference in the market corrupts it. Therefore he called for privatization of government assets, freedom from government regulations, and from trade barriers. Friedman's views were a response to the views of John Maynard Keynes, the economist behind the post WW II reconstruction efforts of Europe and Japan.

The problem was that Friedman's vision of pure and free markets was not appealing to any but the wealthy; it seemed to offer few benefits to the middle and lower classes, the majority of voters in a democracy. So Friedman had difficulty getting any government to adopt his ideas.

Enter the research of Ewen Cameron, a psychiatrist with impressive credentials. He believed that to create healthy new behaviors in patients he had to break up their old psychological patterns by breaking down their current structures. To do this , he used electroshock and drugs, including hallucinogens, and other techniques to "de-pattern" his patients. Many lost their memories and some became incapable of functioning normally... but the CIA became interested in the techniques as a method of mind control. Cameron's techniques, including isolation and sensory deprivation, became instruments of torture: "As a means of extracting information during interrogations, torture is notoriously unreliable, but as means of terrorizing and controlling populations, nothing is quite as effective" (p. 126).

"It was in 1982 that Milton Friedman wrote the highly influential passage that best summarizes the shock doctrine: "Only a crisis -real or perceived - produces real change. When that crisis occurs, the actions that are taken depend on the ideas that are lying around. That, I believed, is our basic function: to develop alternatives to existing policies, to keep them alive and available until the politically impossible becomes politically inevitable." (p. 140) Crisis could create opportunity for drastic new measures to be introduced quickly, to cause such shock among the populace that they were incapable of acting counter to the new policies. So the ideas of Cameron and Friedman merged to exploit or create shocks that would allow governments to pursue doctrines that would never succeed democratically.

The first true laboratory for the shock doctrine was the Pinochet coup in Chile against Allende, a coup backed by the CIA. "The shock of the coup prepared the ground for economic shock therapy; the shock of the torture chamber terrorized anyone thinking of standing in the way of the economic shocks." (p. 71).

There has to be a warning that this book will at times make the reader sick to his/her stomach... there are graphic depictions of torture. Yet the horror is not gratuitous, it is vital to understanding all that happened.

The Chicago school triumphed in country after country, especially after they captured the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank, those institutions ironically set up to carry out Keynesian ideas of reconstruction after disaster.

The results in so many countries were the same. A small core of native elites and multinational companies profited enormously. But the percentage of the people living in poverty rose drastically, native industries disappeared, unable to compete, farms became bankrupt, unemployment soared and wages were depressed for those who still had a job. In South Africa and Poland, popular regimes elected to dismantle repressive regimes were forced to pay the debts of those old regimes, and to do so had to accept money from the IMF, with the attending requirements to adopt Friedman style economics.

Much of the book is a detailed examination of the shock doctrine and its effects in country after country - the Southern Cone countries of Latin America, Poland, South Africa, Russia, China, Iraq, Israel... the list goes on and on. Finally the war in Iraq makes some sense: the idea was to "shock and awe" Iraq to create a tabula rasa, a clean slate upon which would be drawn a stable sound country, free economically and democratically, which would serve as a blueprint to remake the entire Middle East (it becomes clear that part of the draw of Islamic terrorist organizations, like the Mahdi Army and Hezbollah, is that these groups have provided basic services, like hospitals, schools, and garbage disposal, that governments were no longer providing).

The shocks now even include natural disasters, with a disaster economy ready to go and to profit from them, perhaps most strikingly illustrated after the 2004 tsunami, when so many who relied on fishing for their living lost the beach front lands their families had owned for generations, to New Orleans, where public schools were not rebuilt and private schools became the norm. In Israel, the homeland security firms have become the backbone of the economy, driving a disinclination to secure peace.

But in many places, especially Latin America where the shocks are beginning to wear off,. Such places are becoming resistant to further shock, having suffered the worst that shock could do.

If you only read one book on current affairs, let it be this one. If you aren't interested in politics, manufacture an interest long enough to read this one book. Vital events are happening throughout the world that affect our lives, and the course this country decides to take for the future. Reading this book helps one to make informed decisions as a voter and citizen.

The blog for the TV show Bill Moyers' Journal asked people to nominate the books they would most like to see the next president take to the White House with him/her. The Shock Doctrine came in at number 1.

I was literally blown away by the quality of the research and the writing that went into this book. The quality of Naomi Kleins mind is so pervasive throughout the analysis that I was considering ditching my bachelorhood and trading up into the world of the superior intellect. Then I found that she is already taken.
This book is a stunning critique of the biggest jerk that ever imprinted the schools of economics, Milton Friedman. While taking a capstone economics course at a prestigious university I was given a handout one day. The title of the piece was "Only Money Matters". The author was Milton Friedman. I considered his theory for a few minutes. That meant that selling lives for $100 was smart economics.
There are plenty of powerful people, (Rockefeller & Kissinger & Cheney & Rumsfeld to name a few stalwarts) who have spent decades showing that extracting $100 with the ruination of a human being was simply good business. Milton Friedman was their biggest cheerleader.
Friedman is now gone and the world is a better place. His doctrine of complete and utter selfishness has finally been shown to be nothing more than complete and utter selfishness. Too bad that millions had to die. Unfortunate that millions lost their jobs. Sad that millions lost their homes. Luckless that thousands committed suicide in the wake of the triumvirate of Friedman, the IMF, and the multi national corporation.
Happily, the world is waking up. Those who cheer for benevolence and sanity hope that it fully awakens before the master planners kill it.

"The Shock Doctrine" is a must-read for anyone who wants to get a clearer picture about what the US has done in Iraq relating to the 2003 invasion, from an economic perspective. The book begins decades before, from the lens of Milton Friedman and his advocates' approach to laissez faire, free-trade corporatist economics and government's role in making it happen.

She does seem to come from a viewpoint as seeing free trade, etc mostly just punishing the less fortunate. It should be noted that Milton Friedman did advocate a negative income tax to replace welfare. So, it is not that he and some of his advocates are either totally misguided or heartless. However, there are indeed excesses by many in powerful positions who really are either misguided or heartless or both.

From tsunamis to Hurricane Katrina to changes in government in Chile, the Soviet Union, Argentina, etc and the 'shock and awe' in Iraq, there are people with power who either wait for or effect some cataclysm to panic everyday people to accept what is really not in their best interest and looks to reward the well-connected.

I'll just mention a few things from the book which come to mind and I feel noteworthy:

1. The author uses the term, 'useful crisis', like with the Canadian debt crisis in the 90's, to create a sense of panic to justify potential cuts to social programs. This term is appropriate in generalizing what has happened around the world in different situations.

2. Donald Rumsfeld was a board member of ASEA Brown Boveri, the Swiss firm that sold nuclear technology to North Korea. Interesting!

3. Rumsfeld was Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, maker of Tamiflu, the preferred treatment for bird flu, setting up Gilead to make tons of money as the government which he became a part of, then stockpiled the drug while Americans were warned of a possible mass outbreak of the disease. When Rumsfeld left the government, the value of the Gilead stock he still owned had gone up 807%. Interesting!

4. The 2006 Defense Authorization Act grants the president the power to employ the armed forces, overriding the wishes of state governments during a 'public emergency' which could include hurricane, mass protest or public health situation. Previously, the president could only invoke martial law in case of insurrection.

5. US orchestrated foreign coups seeking to protect corporate favorites, can sometimes try to sell the coup because the country is being alien to Americans simply because it is alien to an American company and thereby trying to undermine the US.

6. Paul Bremer, given the responsibility to remake Iraq, enacted a 15% flat tax and allowed foreign companies to own 100% of the profits in Iraq, not re-invest in Iraq and not be taxed. Plus, 40 year leases for foreign investors so any future Iraqi governments would be stuck with the deals.

7. The author reminds the reader of what the political scientist, Michael Wolf, had to say that conservatives never govern well because they believe that government, itself, is bad. Surely not always true, but it is certainly a thought to keep in mind when evaluating a conservative candidate for office.

8. The White House ignored most of the Iraq Study Group's recommendations except to now allow companies like Shell and BP to get long oil leases and keep most of the profits, something not even Bremer permitted, effectively keeping millions of Iraqis in perpetual poverty.

This book is well documented with references and definitely a must-read.

Let me summarize: The fact that HUNDREDS of MILLIONS of people around the world have been lifted out of poverty in the last 2 decades thanks to free market ideas spreading all over the world, that fact doesn't matter. In fact, every country that has adapted free market ideas did much better economically than before. But the author's skewed and very poor economic understanding is.

What's even more amazing, is that blaming corrupt governments, stupid decisions of politicians and ridiculous government policies on free market economics seems to be the norm in this factually inaccurate book. Buy this book only to see how propaganda worked in the Soviet Union.

This book rocks! One of Naomi Klein's best work! I enjoyed reading her earlier book, NO LOGO, and this one is just as great! Be informed and know what's really gone on and you won't see things the same once you do!

Shock Doctrine is great of you're a fan of Marx and deeply suspicious of free markets. To those of us who grew out of the oppressor/oppressed dichotomy, Klein is tendentious and derivative. Although, to Klein's credit, she does elicit the memories of stoned, plaid-wearing college sophomores trying to explain the incalculable superiority of Cuban health care and literacy to those of 'buffoonish America.'

This book is not worth your time if you have a shred of economic literacy. In fact, I would only recommend Klein to children/teenagers so they can be exposed to and grow out of Marxism faster.

This book is great. Naomi Klein provides a coherent analysis of various chaotic events in our time pinpointing the role of Milton Friedman and the extreme 'government is bad' ideology coming out of the University of Chicago. The analysis is new, the book is well written, and is both academic and easy to read.

The analysis could be applied to other events not used as case studies in the book, for example, to explain the 'free market' policies we can expect to be imposed by the `post-crisis government' in Zimbabwe, and why the state labor government of New South Wales will struggle to privatise the electricity generation industry in that democratic Australian state.

One of the major cases studies in the book is the war in Iraq.

After reading "The Shock Doctrine" one can see that the commonly accepted idea that the war in Iraq has been a disaster with its death tolls, unclear outcomes, and wasteful expenditure is wrong - the war has not been a disaster for the constituency that matters, being the civilian contractors who have picked up the big bucks. For them the war has been a great success, whatever you might think.

George Bush was right to declare victory when he did, because by then the victory was won and there was nothing that could affect the flow of money. "Mission accomplished, the money is in the bank thanks be to US tax payers, Iraqi oil revenues, and tax payers in other donating countries. We have won. Ha ha ha", he might have said.

More broadly, Ms Klein points out that there is a well organised group of financiers, bankers, and contractors poised to make fantastic profits in short periods during and after any period of crisis. These opportunistic storm chasers are also storm seeders, and their ideology has been Friedman's hyper free market mantra that would exclude government from a meaningful social role in the economy.

Klein's thesis is that without a crisis, these Friedmanic policies would never be accepted by a democratic voting public that relies upon the government for the provision of all kinds of social services from education to health etc. With a crisis, manufactured or otherwise, the assistance of the IMF and World Bank and a good deal of suppression it is possible to apply Friedmanic economic shock therapies.

Putting aside the misery, the bloodshed, the torture, the murders, and the blows against democracy that accompanied the crises in South America, Asia, the former eastern bloc, and now Iraq, and looking at the money that has been made by banks, finances houses and certain connected companies and individuals in the aftermath one can see how successful Friedman's flag carriers have been.

Perhaps Friedman himself should be exhumed to declare a victory on their behalf in the ashes of some ruin, shanty town or morgue. "The money is in the bank, ha ha ha", he might say.

The disturbing thing is that there is no clear end to this business, as the sudden rush of profits that come from fomenting crises and moving in with solutions based on privatising entire industries, dropping corporate tax rates, cutting government expenditure, blasting open new markets, reducing social and environmental regulations, repressing trade unions and social organisations, etc. is addictive.

The storm seeders are well armed, they are well trained, they are well organised and have friends in government, and they may be coming to a neighbourhood near you, particularly if you live in Tehran. Be very careful.

In summary, Naomi Klein is to be congratulated on this book. The ideas are new and cogent, her analysis makes sense and makes sense of the world, and in my humble opinion once you have finished reading "The Shock Doctrine" you should lend it to a friend or an ideological enemy or donate it to your local high school.

...for everyone who wants to understand the destructive impact of the "free market" ideology in today's world. Clear and well written, this book will help you to understand the destruction that modern capitalism is foisting on the world today. You will gain a much better understanding of what has happened in Russia, the UK, Iraq and the U.S. Profoundly disturbing and incredibly insightful, this is a book you must read.

A profound review of history in my life time. Should be discussed in college level history courses. For those few reviewers who dismiss this as just more liberal bias I'd ask how you would interpret the facts that Ms. Klein presents? So much suffering for greed.

This book provides a useful frame from which to view the actions of the right wing, including the Bush Administration, of the past few decades. It's very well-researched, and offers many useful details on the history of "free market" economics and torture. It draws a clear line from these origins to their implementations across the world. It does a great job of debunking the idea that "capitalism" as it is practiced today is actually not the system most people want (nor is authoritarian communism, and the right wing has done a very good job of framing the two systems as an either/or), nor does it actually does not "trickle down" or "help everyone"; rather it explodes income inequalities and amplifies misery for the people on the bottom or even close to it. While I think that is easy to see from looking at many countries, including our own, it is useful to be said. After all, history is written by the victors, and those victors have done very well using these principles.

I think Klein gets off course and starts to editorialize a bit too much in places, especially when she discusses Iraq and New Orleans. But this is understandable, these two places offer up the most naked and raw expressions of the ideas, all the ideas, she explained earlier in the book, and the chaos in both places prove she is on to something at the very least. But these sections will also make it much harder to convince those who are, shall we say, "center right" (far right neocons will never give this book a consideration). And that is unfortunate, as I think this is a valuable book in many ways.

This book should earn 5 stars for covering an extremely important topic. Klein reveals an important aspect of the Bush administration and the neocons in general, something that has always confused me... Why does the Bush administration always seem to make the worst decisions possible? The answer is of course they are driven by an extreme ideology.

This book loses a star for being written in a disingenuous matter. The phraseology used in this book is emotionally manipulative and hollow. Every word seems designed to elicit sympathy for whomever Naomi designates as a victim.

The book loses another star for its preoccupation with torture. There are some parallels to the books main theme and torture, but they don't deserve nearly as much treatment as they get. Once again this is done for emotional value.

Lastly, the book loses another star for its unabashed socialist attitude. Naomi's hate of corporations and capitalism is plain. She constantly paints corporate failures as something a government entity wouldn't allow to happen -- She forgets that governments and corporations are both made up of people and both are at least as likely to be incompetent.

In addition continually approaches problems from the socialist premise that the government owes people things -- once again forgetting that the government is just ordinary and often below average people, and that it cannot give you anything which it did not take from you.

If there was any other book on the subject, I would recommend it. Until then its important to be aware of the issue, so read this book if you can.

One of the most important political books of the decade, packages the radical neo-con policies and disasters they have created in the last 40 years and presents it all in a relatively easy to follow timeline.

Naomi certainly makes some interesting points and has done heavy duty research. What she is saying strikes a chord with many people, which explains why this book receives so many positive reviews.

Unfortunately, though, the vitriolic nature of this work makes Naomi seem like a loose cannon or a hammer looking for a nail. She doesn't pretend to hide her contempt for privitization, Milton Friedman, free market capitalism, Chicago school economics, and what not. There is no pretense of balance as she employees jackhammer-style reasoning (often with little proof). She doesn't account for the subtleties of the issues involved. In her her jackhammer approach, a spade is a spade and if it isn't--it becomes one. She flattens distinctions and broadsides nuances into flat surfaces. And, as it has already been pointed out elsewhere, Naomi uses every rhetorical trick in the book.

Her attacks on Milton Friedman are particularly vitriolic. And yet the system she critiques as being "Friedmanite" doesn't even come close to implementing his ideals fully! Klein attacks Friedman for supporting tyranny in Chile, but really, all Friedman did was advise the Chilean government, and those reforms were implemented to some degree. Hardly cause to attack Friedman's character. And, of course, Naomi lists bad things that happened under free-market systems, but doesn't contrast that with what happened under those same countries under a government regulated economy. According to Naomi, the Cato Institute is neo-conservative and FDR's New Deal was not only good, but necessary. OK. I'll have to differ on that, but let's continue..

Be prepared for nauzeating buzz-words with no value except for emotional and rhetorical: "Corporate new jerusalem", "balooning corporate power", "radical free market", "corporatist", "dazzling rich and disposable poor", "corporate supremisist", "the rise of corpratism", "ultra-conservative", "maniacal quest", "the corporatist alliance", etc.

Naomi does have a valid critique regarding the way the government panders to big firms and, in privitization, plays political games. But that is not really a critique of true free-market capitalism, but rather it a critique of a particular form of government intervention over against another form of it.

There's no doubt that Naomi is quite sharp and intelligent and that this book is no small feat. But, really, I suggest you look elsewhere if you want a balanced critique from a similar perspective. There isn't much in this book to commend it to you. The unique true facts in this book can be found elsewhere, and without the poisonous vitriol.

And in closing, if you've already read Naomi's attack on Milton Friedman, do yourself a favor and read his ideas first hand--in "Capitalism and Freedom". He deserves a fair evaluation--without Naomi's sarcastic, slanted rhetoric.

For decades, we've been baraged with the idea that the free market is a force of nature, as incontestable as the law of gravity, and that it somehow represents the natural extension of free democratic societies. We've heard this so often, we've all but ceased to question it, yet the history of unfettered free market policies fails to support empirically their proponents' idealized predictions. This is the blindfold that Naomi Klein's work seeks to lift from our eyes.

Ms. Klein chronicles the repeated efforts of free market advocates to impose radical free market policies around the world and observes that, in stark contrast to the joyous choruses of freedom on the march offered by the architects of such policies, the reality has been far less promising. In every instance, "free" market policies have been forced upon populations which did not desire them, and with the uniform and predictable consequence of making a tiny minority richer than kings, at the expense of impoverishing the majority of the population.

Critics fault the quality of Ms. Klein's economic analysis, which I find telling. Ms. Klein is not an economist, nor does she pretend to be. Rather, she is a journalist who is chronicling events, none of which, interesting enough, do her critics wish to discuss.

I also am not an economist and I do not presume to speculate whether Milton Friedman and his disciples are as sinister as Ms. Klein perhaps overreachingly suggests, but it matters not at all to me what their intentions may or may not have been: what does matter is that their experiments in radical free markets have consistently produced catastrophic human costs. It is therefore far from having reached the level of an established truism that the "free market" represents some benevolent force of nature and thus the only sensible goal of every policy maker. Quite the opposite: the costly and bloody track record of such policies demands a serious evaluation of the theory's basic assumptions.

Yet, as Ms. Klein points out, proponents of radical free market economics share with other fundamentalists a faith in their ideology which denies any admission of error. Like religious fundamentalists, they have created a logical closed loop, whereby any evidence conflicting with their world view, no matter how overwhelming, is invariably dismissed as the fault of external influences and tamperings with the idealized workings of the free market as they understand it. I find it ironic that these economists like to think of themselves as scientists describing a natural phenomenon, yet the first rule of the scientist is to find hypotheses to explain what they empirically observe; the first rule of the free market economists seems to be to assert a weak hypothesis, and then attempt to force reality to conform to it, no matter how poor a fit it may be.

That Dr. Friedman and his followers are unable or unwilling to acknowledge the reality of their misguided hypotheses is regretable. If we are to have any hope of avoiding repetitions of the same tragic mistakes and failures to which their flawed ideas have led us, it is crucial that the rest of us at least begin to look rather more critically at the fruit those policies have in fact born. Ms. Klein's work is an important step in that direction.

'The Shock Doctrine' trashes the Friedman, Chicago School, Economist's (the magazine) take on what makes economies work, and why what is pushed as "the free market" is evil. You should read. It changed how the neurons in my head process info - an epiphany? Glad I was exposed to it, well worth reading.

On the downside, it made me feel like I was rooting for the losing team. A long laundry list of brutalized, eviscerated countries case histories without even one example of ok, "we" won this one. Some small hope is offered in the last chapter.

This book should be a must read for everyone. It clearly reports the unbelievable practises of a small group of economists from THe Chicago School of Economics who staged wholesale disruption of countries such as Chile, Argentina, Indonesia, Uraguy and many more to forward Milton Friedman's ideas of a free market world.
The book is an expose of the Neocons who would rule the USA. Cheney, Rumsfeld, Reagan, and the thinktanks of The Cato Institute and others have this agenda in mind when they espouse their "Free Markets Economies" on the world.
It's a bit heavy going at first, but as you get further along it is hypnotic....a must read for all those concerned about freedom.

Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" is certainly the history/politics book of the year for 2007 and probably the book of the decade. She finds the common threads of history that run from the early 1970's to the early 2000's, showing how torture and terror have historically been closely connected to the economic doctrines of Milton Friedman and the Chicago Boys. She shows that merely opposing torture in the abstract, without studying the economic policies that give rise to torture, is inadequate.
Many books begin strong, and by about 1/3 of the way through, they lose steam. This superbly researched book continues producing strong chapter after strong chapter clear to the end.
The only weak chapter is the last, in which Klein calls for the US to take a third path---neither capitalist nor socialist but more like Sweden, as if the Shock Doctrines are a choice, and a kinder, gentler form of capitalism is a possibility. In reality, the drive to maximum profit is not an option but a mandate under capitalism, along with all that follows from this mandate. But the book is so strong and so thought provoking as it ties together everything from CIA brainwashing experiments to the overthrow of South American governments to Eastern European efforts to combat hyperinflation to the US government's non-response to Hurricane Katrina that it is a definite must read.

There really isn't anything i can add that hasn't been said by the other 200 reviewers. Only that there should be a 6th star to rate it & this is one of maybe 10 books in the entire amazon stock that would truly deserve it. I can only compare it to Leon Trotsky's The Revolution Betrayed in the way it spells out so well what went so horribly wrong. For such information-packed writing it is a real "page-turner" with the bonus of ending with what i can agree is an accurately hopeful note.

Do not fail to read Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine", the clearest, best documented explanation of America's long standing, vicious foreign policy yet written. Other books on this sad attack by the US on developing nations note the obvious that unfettered free market economics ala the late Milton Friedman produces disastrous conditions for the masses where tried and can only be put in place under dictatorships which use brutal repression. What are the 3 main prescriptions of the Friedman technique: Privatization, deregulation, and cutbacks in social welfare spending, a triple play which clearly on the record does not produce real democracy, in fact, as history proves the results are exactly the opposite.

However, Klein's investigative reporting is the best on America's empire building activities which I have read so far.

The US government, the IMF and rich multinationals installed what she calls "shock capitalism" everywhere a crisis could be found or created in these countries. Examples include Chile, Russia under Yeltsin, and many other hapless countries which were caught in this largely US spun spider web. Klein tells how the greedy corporate elites here, the same ones who have bought and now control our government, are well along in the process of doing it to us in the USA! Examples: Importing cheap, often illegal labor well beyond any need, failing to secure our borders and ports, trying to ram a truck route from Mexico to the Canadian border, cutting government help to the poor, fixing the tax laws to benefit the wealthiest Americans, exporting our manufacturing jobs to cheap labor countries, ignoring constitutionally guaranteed rights under the guise of guarding us against terrorism, and trying to steal public assets via privatization, are all designed to bring untold riches to the elites and crush the spirit of the Middle and working classes which have made this democracy great.

The belief that unfettered capitalism brings real democracy which Milton Friedman sold long ago to US policy makers in both parties and the corporate elites which support them did not prove true in the multiple cases where is was tried. Ramming it into numerous developing countries on the wings of various crises (e.g. craftily planned engineered shocks like the Iraq War) allowed US firms and elite insiders in the countries where it was tried to steal public assets and destroy the laws and institutions of many governments. Horrifying stuff, Folks.

Frankly, neither Clinton or Obama will bring this situation to a halt, but at least Obama is not blatantly in the pocket of the hard right neo conservatives who have led the stealing here and abroad, while Mrs. Clinton surely must have known about this situation while serving as First Lady. We must be deeply indebted to Klein for bringing the case against what she dubs "corporatism" to light and hopefully to help initiate its decline.

I find this the best researched and most important book I've ever read for making sense of the economic and social patterns of the last 35 years. It has become a framework that places the news into perspective... It will have a lasting impact on anyone who reads it with an open mind...

Most Americans would be shocked what has been done in their name for the few
elite that profit from wars and disasters. EVERY American needs to get educated, and QUICK, because it will soon be at their doorstep and not just someone else's problem.

Hell, even New York Magazine tagged this book as A Brilliant Inditement of Chicago School Economics.

Some very smart people that know a thing or two about economics highly recommended this book to me. So, I got it and well--

To anybody out there that is not sure if they want to purchase this book --

After you've read this book you will not look at the world the same way again. Yea, it's one of THOSE books. It will indeed affect the way you understand things because it will open your eyes and make you see what you have not before. I don't mean to sound melodramatic, it is just a fact. We live in a radically troubled and unjust world and it is time we all wake up to the reality of how our economic and political systems are destroying people and the planet.

If your skeptical or if you consider yourself a conservative, a Right-winger, a Republican, whatever, -- I would still recommend the book to you if you have an interest in economics. It's an interesting read and very well written.

I'm about 150 pages into this fascinating book and I think it should be required reading for every american. It is my fervent hope that this book puts one of the final nails into the coffin of Corporate rule that is ruining, not just America, but the world. I read her book "No Logo" and this is even better. Read it and pass it on. This book will change history. IF enough people read it. From the amount of 5 star reviews on this site this book could create a conversation or meme that would make it happen. Thanks, Naomi!

The Shock Doctrine details how we were addicted to the false idea of the "Free Market" and how this was used to bludgeon countries around the world into submission to us. It explains how military power and ruthless authoritarian governments were imposed by us as an essential part of our strategy. Naomi Klein has collected all the facts in a remarkable job of research to make a strong case that many admired heros of the past 30+ years are seriously implicated as villains. Of course, Iraq is the latest in a long string of failed foreign policy debacles.
Now Klein's conclusions lead to the case made by Robert Kuttner in his latest book, The Squandering of America, that we are unable to deal with the managed capitalism of China (and others) because our hands are tied by our religious attachment to the irrationality of the free market.

This is a must read for our generation. Klein's research and ability to dissect the neoliberal economic movement to its very core is outstanding. I hope that more people read this book and feel the same shock and anger I did. May this book become the catalyst needed for a movement that will change something that is very sick in our society today.

Shocking analysis of the depredations of unbridled capitalism and feckless government. Every citizen should read this book to learn of the immorality of multinational corporations and stooge politicians. The book details murder, torture and war leading to robbery of countries in Latin America, the Middle East, Europe and Asia.

Extremely informative. We all sit back and have no idea what is going on in the world until you read something like this. Our value system and our humanity have gone awry. Capitalism is at its peak, and unless we all stand up to this kind of behavior, it will only get worse. Whatever has happened to us, we no longer seem to care about one another - only money -and really, where does that get us.
Nem

I highly recommend this book to anyone who wants to learn the history of events and tactics used today in both the military but also paramilitary(police). It exposes and informs about issues that should be of great concern to most individuals. It is well written and if you are not familiar with how past events and behaviors set us up for events taking place today.It also ties in the psychology field of study with political tactics and goals and how this field of study advanced modern day politics and propoganda.

A lot of history in this book--Dense and makes for slow-going reading. Thoroughly depressing, but compelling and utterly brilliant. I liked her previous books, but this is on a completely different level. Pair it up with Kinzer's Overthrow and you will have a good behind-the-official-rhetoric (read: "spreading democracy") overview of the United States' foreign policy in the twentieth century. The weakest part is the title and trying to give a punchy name to phenomenon she's describing. It rubs me the wrong way, but this is only a minor quibble.

One word can describe this text, "Misleading."

Anybody with a respectable amount of knowledge on the subject of economics would know that capitalism as it is practiced around the world today is a hybrid system with strong elements of socialism mixed in. A true free market system and capitalism thus are not the same thing. Ms. Klein vilifies Milton Friedman for his advocacy of capitalism, but Dr. Friedman never saw any economic system rise up in his lifetime that completely reflected his personal ideals. The economic system that most closely resembled what he proposed was Hong Kong before 1997. Why is nobody complaining about disparities and inequality in Hong Kong?

Ms. Klein attributes many bad things that happened in "capitalist" societies to Dr. Friedman's philosophy, when most of those admittedly bad things resulted from policies and situations that Dr. Friedman preached against, such as special interest protections, secretive dealings, etc. What about the bad things that happened in countries where the state controlled the economy? Dr. Friedman argued that, though capitalism isn't perfect, it most closely resembles the free-market system he would prefer. And, of all the systems employed in countries around the world, no other system has benefited the lot of the average person more than capitalism. Capitalism is not perfect, and a Utopia does not and will not ever exist. Capitalism, however is more perfect than Socialism. How many East Germans were willing to risk their lives to cross over into the capitalist West Germany? And how many West Germans dreamed of living in Socialist East Germany? Where would you rather have lived? Dr. Friedman had nothing to do with Pinochet's crimes. If anything, the power of Dr. Friedman's ideas convinced Pinochet to relinquish some of his power in order to institute pension reforms. What Dr. Friedman did in Chile was a good thing, not a bad thing. When he was invited to Chile to advise the government, what should he have done, declined? How would that have been a good thing? If George Bush began accepting advice on the Iraq war from Noam Chomsky, would you call Chomsky a Bush supporter?

If you read this book, at least give one of Dr. Friedman's books a chance. His writing style is very easy to follow.

!!!!WARNING to all Naomi Klein fans!!!!!
Milton Friedman is notorious for presenting his arguments articulately and persuasively. If you think you can be convinced by arguments rife with reason and logic and like your beliefs spoon-fed to you, do not read Milton Friedman's writings. Dr. Friedman's reasoning has a tendency to cause the reader to reconsider his notions of fairness, rightness, freedom, tyranny, wealth, government, choice, autonomy, and greed.

This book by Naomi Klein was informative and provocative. I have recommended it to many friends, including to Bill Moyers for his Bill Moyer's Journal program.

This book by Naomi Klein is truly shocking and frightening to which the true nature of the American government is revealed. I found myself having a hard time reading this book because of the dark nature behind the today's world politics and the tortures which is currently been in use by the government. I found it to be saddening to see how our leaders are using human beings for their own benefits, and how they favors money over human lives...that freedom or democracy is only a disguise or empty word to justify their unethical evil actions.

With her intense research and profound discovery, Klein exposed the evil nature behind the politics of American wars both in the past and present, and of course the future. This book is also an excellent account of how disaster capitalism came to be and how long this been going on. It is very informative book, which will impact readers everywhere. No one is safe. Klein has written well-documented and extensive researched work that would certainly open one's eyes to see the "man behind the curtain."

I humbly give much appreciative and thanks to Ms. Klein for bringing forth this important and an eye-opener work. I truly highly recommend this book.

Having just bought this book by the brilliant Ms. Klein, I want to say that if anyone doubts her authenticity, they're simply augmenting, through denial and ignorance, a reign of terror only imagined in Science Fiction. I'm one of those who's seen first-hand, what she describes: my mother having been one of Dr. Ewen Cameron's "patients", my husband, his psychiatric resident. Both are dead. If a medical student did not obey Cameron, or disclosed what was going at The Allen Memorial Institute in the 60's, he or she was finished as a physician. Cameron was a monster, given unlimited power which we all knew about back then - his involvement with the CIA, and so on. But we as a family were helpless to do anything. Our telephones were bugged,our mail opened. And we had no contact with anything illegal whatsoever. After months in the famous Sleep Room where my mother's mind was literally destroyed through his ruthless experimentation, when we could do nothing to liberate or save her, we learned the whole story - but it was too late. That man, part of a world-wide ruthless system, obviously so aptly described my Naomi Klein, died without all his victims having had their "day in court". And he was just one of the many, many brutal puppets of a system that chose - and chooses - to exploit the world's suffering in the name of power. Thank you a thousand times over, Ms. Klein.