Klein displays a stunning breadth of economic and historical ignorance.

She literally doesn't know what she's writing about.

Her accusations against Friedman are completely without merit. She completeley mischaracterizes and/or misunderstands the quotes and events she includes.

If you love to indulge in fantasy conspiracies without regard to the truth, then by all means jump into this.

Otherwise, save yourself time and money and read something else.

THE SHOCK DOCTRINE clearly presents the current status of international economics that has been brought about by the global corporatist state. It is the most enlightening and inspiring book that I have read for several decades. It also made me very angry. Although I could clearly see the consequences of global corporatism, I had only a fuzzy notion of how the present state of the world had come about. Naomi Klein made it all clear, for which I most sincerely thank her. The callous stupidity of Bremer's actions in Iraq, such as firing thousands of policemen, firemen, and other state workers, and demolishing elections in order to install Saddam-era military leaders as local governors certainly made no sense until put into the context of the drive to privatization. The Bush administration wanted us to believe that their war was not for oil, yet one of the outstanding consequences of the war is that US and European corporations now have completely taken control of oil away from Iraq. If the war had actually been for "Iraqi freedom" it is almost certain that the US would have won. Actually, the US corporations did win the war; only the US citizens and the Iraqi citizens lost, and neither of us count.

A recent Yahoo headline stated that only 17% of Americans are in favor of the direction in which America is heading. Making an educated guess, I would bet that most of these Americans comprise the 4% to 5% of Americans who own 85% or so of America's wealth, and the Ann-Coulter kooks who are convinced that God wants America to conquer the Islamic nations and force them to become Christians. I have to wonder where the majority of Americans have been for the past thirty years. Did they not realize that America has been going in that same direction for at least that long? Now we have travelled so far along this route that its effects are potentially far more disastrous than they have already proven to be.

Economists who bought Milton Friedman's claim of scientific economics have much of which to be ashamed, both from a professional standpoint and from that of human decency. One gets a clear sense of both the flimsy ethical and logical grounding of laissez-faire capitalism in Adam Smith's WEALTH OF NATIONS. Smith acknowledges that the "masters," as he calls them, must pay their workers enough wages to support a wife and two children, so that the masters will have a steady supply of future workers. He further acknowledges that the workers live in such miserable conditions that half of their children will die before the age of manhood so they must have four instead of only two children. He neither defends nor condemns the economic system that results in this high death rate; he simply takes it for granted as natural. Smith also takes it for granted that all people naturally have no higher goal in life than to make as much money as they possibly can, and as long as governments do not restrict this natural inclination to self-interest, then the "invisible hand of the free market" will magically work to bring about the best possible state for everyone. He states this as if it were a self-evident fact despite the lack of evidence to support it, and in the face of much evidence against it. Friedman claimed that his economic model was scientific and mathematically sound, despite the fact that for at least for the last several decades economics has been recognized as a non-linear system for which precise mathematical models are not even possible. Friedman's Chicago School economists also take it for granted that the bulk of humanity exists for no purpose except to supply non-unionized sweat-shop fodder. It is incredible that any honest economist could ever have been naive enough to actually believe in the "trickle down," or the "elevator" model of lawless capitalism - an outcome comparably improbable to the "withering away of the state" that was supposed to occur under Communism.

The mantra by which Friedman corporatists justify castrating all social programs: "It is a major error to believe that it is possible to do good with other people's money." This assertion takes it for granted that an economic system in which the "masters" make 400 times more than the people who actually do the labor, including the creative ones who actually devise the products that make the masters rich, have actually earned and have an inalienable right to their wealth. Since Corporatism requires constant growth it is often compared to cancer, the only other organism with a philosophy of constant growth and destruction of the organism upon which it feeds. Klein convincingly demonstrates that corporatism has created an economy that thrives on, and has now become dependent on, disasters, yet she writes "the disaster capitalism complex does not deliberately scheme to create the cataclysms on which it feeds," so no conspiracies are required. I am not so sure. Klein points out that over a third of the nation believes that the Bush administration was either responsible for the 9/11 catastrophe or knew about it but did nothing to prevent it, but dismisses the idea with no further discussion. How remarkable is it that over a third of the US population hates the Bush cohorts so vehemently that they believe them guilty of the mass murder American citizens? I once dismissed this accusation as lunatic paranoia, but I not bothered to examine the evidence. Anyone watching the video recording of the collapse can see that as the top of one of the towers began to topple, there was an enormous explosion just beneath this section, followed by a series of explosions throughout the building as it underwent symmetrical collapse at nearly free fall speed. It certainly looked just like planned demolition. One of the experts on the 9/11 Conspiracy Theory History Channel special assured us that buildings just naturally collapse like that. If this is true, then the demolition experts whose job it is to make buildings undergo symmetrical collapse must be guilty of fraud. The Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth organization have tested the rubble from the explosion and found traces of thermate, an explosive used to melt steel. There are photographs of melted steel girders in the wreckage. It is absolutely true that neither the heat from the jet fuel nor the inflammables found in the building could have melted those girders.

Though Klein depicts the world under the domination of corporatism as grim, her book ends with optimistic indications that people have caught on to how corporatists take advantage of disasters, so the method no longer work as well; unfortunately corporatism is still going strong in the US. Corporatism has long gotten away with associating the evils of Communism with socialistic democracy, while at the same time the threat of Communism forced Capitalism to temper its extremists by adopting social programs. Since the past fifty years have demonstrated that "free markets" and free people are contradictory concepts, we can only hope Americans will be able to learn from the socialist trends currently arising in South America and other parts of the world. While the corporatists like to equate social democracy with fascism, what it really means is that production is controlled by the workers and engineers who actually produce the wealth, rather than by investors who do very little beyond sucking up the bulk of the wealth.

Klein provides a lot of support and sources for how things went wrong or not in favor of her view points, but provides not alternatives or looks at what did go right.

The entire book is a rant about the Bush administration (past and present), New Orleans and the Iraq war and occupation.

Shock Doctrine attempts to do exactly what Klein is ranting about, but for her own view point. The book reads much like an angry blogger with a narrowed point of view with little thought and much more complaining then analysis. The book would have been worth more to publish if it offered more alternatives and analysis rather than finger pointing and complaining, instead the book does nothing that anyone else could do by looking at the facts and see that there are corrupt men in the world and that crisis allows those driven by greed to take advantage of the situations.

that it is almost predictive. If you look at how the Republicans responded to the floods in Iowa, this book is perfectly predictive. Thank you, Naomi Klein.

It's freakin crazy, every day now I see a new headline in the news, where it seems as though something brought up within this book has now become under attack such as:

- The Bush Administration wanting to use the current ecalated price of oil as motivation that the US should allow the corporations to drill in protected areas.
- The authorization of the use of turture by US military officials, current press releases have even gone as far as targeting Cheney himself.
- A re-analization of the laws and rights exercsied by the pentagon made directly after 9/11 of the right to search and spy on individuals & corporations.
- Iraq's resistance to give up too much power to the US, especially in terms of oil.
- Everything from floods in the Midwest, to threats by Isreal, being used as oppurtunities for speculators to make a buck.
- The rising tide of resource rich countries, to lean towards the left, thru democratic means.

Besides, Guns Germs & Steel, I have yet to read another book that was so informative, comprehensive, well documented and logically conclusive.
After reading this book you feel as though you've taken a full year of classes on modern economic policies, foreign fiscal policy, historical & current political events, sociology and the human experiment.

- I found "The Assault on Reason" by Al Gore to be a good subsequent read to this novel.

It's the economy, stupid.

Do you have any idea of how much terror represents as a business?. Well, I didn't. After the economic "e-bubble" ended some years ago, the option at hand to push the economy was terror...

In this latest, well documented N. Klein's book, beginning in Montreal with the CIA's mind experiments back in the 50's, you'll be taken by the hand in tour from the University of Chicago campus to Buenos Aires, Santiago, La Paz, Caracas, New Orleans, New York, Beirut, Tel Aviv, etc. and to practically every place on Earth, that from those days, has represented an opportunity to put into practice what the author calls the "destruction capitalism" practices or M. Friedman's ideas on how to end (once and for all) with keynisian economics in the world, thanks to natural or man's created catastrophes.

An interesting interpretation to the most significant economic, political, social, cultural, etc. events in our world for the past 50 or 60 years... and a brilliant analogy between 1950's CIA's attempts to "erase" the mind of individuals to "recreate it" and attempts to "shock" economic systems to profit out of them...

Also shocking is Klein's disclosure of Latin America as an "economic shocking therapy" laboratory beginning with Chile's coup / Allende's killing back in '73.

Then, I found particularly fascinating Klein's explanation on the consequences (political and economic) of the Berlin's wall fall back in '89 (trust me, it's nothing to do with what thought you knew).

The upcoming described world, is to say the least, scary as hell. A kind of "Big Brother" world divided by walls, monitored by state of the art devices, and most of all, composed of very rich and very poor people... being only the first the ones who can pay for efficient healthcare, security, decent food, etc.

You cannot miss this book.

Klein's style is what makes this tome so precious to any reader who is tired of both the 'establishment source' corporate media and the dry cross-referencing assault of the previous generation (Perkins, Chomsky, Phillips, et al.). Klein weaves a brilliant and cohesive narrative which pegs the precise points of evolution for both the theories on individual shock treatment and economic shock treatment, relating them in ways that no ordinary scholar can manage. While relying on broadstroke imagery and anecdotal evidence, Klein creates a convincing picture without sacrificing credibility; virtually all of us know what she's writing about and those specific interviews and in-depth studies she conducted get right to the heart of her thesis without muddying the waters of logic or the 'aha' moments for a reader, which are triggered by her verbal cues related to well-known events of recent history.

As for the conlusions, they are completely uncontroversial. The laboratories of Chile, Uruguay, Argentina and post-Gorbachev Russia are complete humanitarian disasters with far-reaching consequences for all but the fortunate few who already had the capital to earn profits from their neo-liberal shock treatments. And I was completely stunned by the Israeli section before Klein's conclusion; the piercing logic, backed by offical statements and a clear chronology, can confirm suspicions that Israel has morphed into a warhawk/security state under Sharon's Likud leadership, and that without intervention Palestine is doomed to perpetual imprisonment. The only counter to Klein's argumentation is ideological - and she's done a fine job of indicting that ideology at every turn in this study.

Not since Foucault's "Discipline and Punish" has there been a more important piece of writing relating the state's abuse of a body to the state's abuse of the body politic. I was, in one word, flattened. That sort of easy intellectaul display in composition is a rarity, especially in the age of modern anti-intellectualism, and completely non-existant in the sphere of economic theory (if you don't believe me read some of the dry nonsense these Chicago-school types write). My only issue is her rosey portrayal of the Marshall Plan, but when set in contrast with the Bremer/Rumsfeld plan it looks rosey indeed. Bet you thought you'd never have to look up from a book and say, "I bet those people wish they were post-war Nazis".

On a personal note, I had to chuckle at the seething intellectual disdain she shows for Milton Friedman, a person whom I've been taught (having been raised in the age of Reagan) to revere. This little Cannuck is Friedman's intellectual superior in every conceivable way, and she's not afraid to let it show. Who cares if you believe in economic liberalism? Read this book anyhow - it's engaging, humorous and entertaining.

Very comprehensive, extraordinarily researched, intense conclusions mark this thought-provoking book. I would like to say everyone should read this book but this book was not written for the "common" person. I would hope that both presidential candidates have someone read this book and discuss the ramifications of it with the whole team of advisors. This is pretty scary stuff in here. The only reason I could not give it 5 stars is because I think Naomi Klein is writing for the professors and grad students so the writing can go way over most people's heads. Most people do not understand basic check-book balancing let alone Friedman economic theories. I wish she had written "down" a little more to make this book easily accessible to more people.

When she writes at the end how important her researchers were for her, that is an understatement. I thought this was one of the best researched books I've ever written. Hundreds of hours of research had to go into this book.

The book starts off slowly with the descriptions of individual shock therapies which I thought she spent too much time on. When the book starts into the history/politics side, it blossoms.

What a great in depth look at how our country really works it's foreign policy! Love the way Klein takes you from the very beginning of shock! A must read for anyone who considers themselves a patriot of the USA! Warning though! This book will force you to do something! It smacked me into following politics much more closely, calling my representatives, and getting much more involved.

I got this book for Christmas and have been reading on it ever since. Unlike people who devoured the book, it has taken me some time to digest this.

Klein has an overarching theory about Shock doctrine and how shock--whether it be physical or psychological or economic--can create a vaccuum because the shocked person(s) are relatively in acute crisis and that allows for draconian measures to be instituted. I suspect that people who do not like the book get hung up on this over-arching theory. I have been slow to buy it and yet there is something there even if it does not attain the status of grand theory--an overarching idea that explains "everything".

And yet, I would urge readers to make peace with this relative flaw and just read the book.

There is something here. She is not "all wrong". I guess in my view of humanity, I would say that Frideman's followers have not been enthusiastic about embracing the pain they have inflicted. Like many flawed people they have minimized and refused to look at the harms their theory inflicts. (the same can be said for many theories of economics and other fields) But she makes a case for it and it is real.

Now I am about two thirds of the way through the book, where I am reading the chapter about Corporatist government. The revelations of this chapter are worth the price of the book and yet to read it in isolation probably won't get you there. The book is an interelated whole. But here she asks some very important questions. If (as she successfully posits) the interests of the government and the interest of big business get conflated and become one in the same, what are the incentives for peace? Corollary questions can be asked: what are the incentives for the government to take care of people as a whole? To see a healthy nation? To provide jobs that provide a just wage and a promise of a future?

In my own field I was stunned to go the CDC web page this winter in the midst of the flu season and to find, on a public information page about influenza, an unprecedented emphasis on anti-viral agents such as Tamiflu. The mainstay of public health approaches to influenza have been prevention in the form of the vaccine and self imposed quarantine and goodhandwashing, to name the highlights. And here was this emphasis on getting in to your doctor to get Tamiflu at the first indication of influenza.

In this particular chapter, Klein talks about how, in an unprecedented way politicians have maintained their connections to business interests (sitting on boards, on the payroll, holding controlling stock interests) WHILE IN OFFICE. Their policy choices have directly impacted ultimately their own bottom line and not unimpressively! So it is a minor point in this chapter that VP CHeney sits on the board of the company that makes...Tamiflu!!! Ta-da! Business interests triumph and public health practice changes. And believe me, Tamiflu is a drop in the bucket of the profits that Cheney and his ilk have seen from being in a position that allows individuals to create policy from which they ultimately profit. This should be concerning to anyone no matter on which end of the political spectrum they count themself.

Read the book. Read it in little bits if that is all you can tolerate. This lady has something important to say.

This book is the most insightful I've read thus far in terms of explaining the current phenomenon in Iraq - a perpetual state of war, with all of the accoutrements; no burdensome regulations, oversight, or accountability - just a wild-west of profiteering.

When coupled with her accounts of the South American / Central American projects, along with the U.S response to hurricane Katrina, it's obvious indeed where we are headed.

What's sad is that many of the GOP lemmings will never see this - as George Lakoff wrote in his excellent book "Don't Think of an Elephant", "the facts will simply bounce right off of them."

Well done, Ms. Klein.

This book is absolutely BRILLIANT in its analysis of the subject matter and I recommend it very, very highly. I wish I could give it ten stars! The message of the book is more than relevant to the times.

Ideology aside, I consider this to be one of the most important books of our time. The reason I started off the way I did is that many people will react to Naomi Klein's book based on their political leanings. In fact, before starting this book, I was inclined to disagree with her premise -that Chicago School economics can be directly tied to oppressive regimes in many parts of the world. This book, however, thoroughly proves this disconcerting truth. The Shock Doctrine is also a brilliant expose and an elegant model which enables us to understand modern history in a new way.

I had originally seen a short video online that summarized the ideas of this book, and my first reaction (again, before reading the book) was that this must be a typical leftist rant, making an abstruse analogy between an economic system with which the author disagrees and real life practices like torture and shock treatment. As someone who was raised, or at least self-raised as basically a libertarian, I did not want to believe Klein's argument. In fact, the only reason I bothered to read the book is that I liked her earlier book, No Logo so much. She is one of the few writers on political and economic subjects whom I actually enjoy reading. Her style is so lucid that, even if I don't agree with some of her ideas, I understand where she is coming from and enjoy following her reasoning.

Alas, there is nothing abstract, symbolic or abstruse about The Shock Doctrine. Nor is it any kind of conspiracy theory, as one reviewer oddly remarked. Everything in this book is well documented, and most of the references are anything but obscure. You can find almost everything that is written about here by going back over newspapers of the last few decades. The fact is, recent oppressive regimes in South America, Eastern Europe and Asia built their systems around the ideas of Milton Friedman and Chicago School economics. This is not a theory or an accusation, but a matter of public record. The only thing that we can dispute and speculate over is whether or not Milton Friedman (and his Chicago School disciples) really approved of the actions of tyrants like Pinochet. In the end, does this really matter?

Again, when I first saw the video based on this book, I was skeptical, especially when I watched graphic footage of people being tortured and then told that there is a nearly perfect analogy between the literal shocking of political prisoners and the economic "shock therapy" inflicted on many nations. The reason this book overcame my skepticism is that these practices really were carried out in a symmetrical manner. That is, individuals were being tortured (by people who studied manuals on shock therapy, devised by a real life "mad doctor" named Ewen Cameron) at the same time their governments were conspiring with Chicago School luminaries.

Advocates of free market economics have always said that we must separate economic and political freedom. For example, we can be horrified by the actions of a Pinochet and yet admire the "economic freedom" that exists under such a regime.
I think one of the most impressive achievements of The Shock Doctrine is the way it discredits this widely held assumption. Even assuming that Chicago School ideas represent the ultimate in economic freedom, is it right, even by libertarian standards, to force such freedom on people who don't want it? The idea of forcing people to be free is an oxymoron, and yet this seems to be the mentality of the U.S. government, World Bank and other supposed defenders of freedom when implementing their strategies in the Third World.

Hardcore libertarians will argue that nothing in this book is a refutation of free market capitalism because none of the examples given are true examples of pure laissez faire capitalism. As someone who would have said this myself twenty years ago, I would now simply ask, what difference does it make? Similar arguments are made by dogmatic Marxists concerning the atrocities of Mao and Stalin (they weren't "really" communists). If we are shown, time after time, that a given ideology is used as a justification for implementing policies that include torture, the murder of dissidents and wide-scale corruption, it may be time to rethink that ideology.

Naomi Klein is an advocate of a "Third Way" between capitalism and communism. Examples of this include the relatively free but socialistic Scandinavian nations. Personally, I don't find these rather bureaucratic societies very attractive, being something of a hardcore anarcho-capitalist in my heart. Yet if people genuinely want a society that looks like modern day Sweden or Venezuela, do I (or the U.S. government) have the right to say they can't have it?

The Shock Doctrine illustrates something that goes beyond politics and ideology. I don't really believe that the people in government, industry and the World Bank, who are responsible for many of the atrocities Klein documents, are actually believers in Chicago School economics, laissez faire or any other system. What they want is wealth and power, and they use ideology as a justification for their actions.

If we put aside the political theory and look at the actions and strategies this book catalogs, we see a clear pattern. These people, as Klein documents, use war, terrorist attacks, natural disasters and the like as opportunities to exploit the masses. This is not a mere hypothesis, for there are ample quotes in the book where this doctrine is openly admitted by those who carry it out. Klein stops short of conspiracy theory, the kind that claims that catastrophic events (such as 9/11 and even natural disasters) were orchestrated by those who later exploited them. Whether Klein's more moderate position or the conspiratorial one is closer to the truth is ultimately of secondary importance. The fact is, those at the top of the power structure use disasters as opportunities to increase their wealth and power.

The beauty of this book is that it presents a coherent picture of American (and allied nations) foreign policy and, to some extent, domestic policy -- the Patriot Act and the Katrina tragedy are also described -- that clearly explains the modus operandi of the power elite. It doesn't matter what kind of political system you think is ideal. This is what is really happening. The book concludes on an upbeat note, as hard to believe as that might seem. There is evidence that as people wise up to the shock doctrine strategy, it will become less effective. Hopefully, many people will read this book and the process will be accelerated.

This book presents a gripping portrait of what corporations seek to do when they have no restraints upon them. Klein's analysis of corporations and the Iraq war is the best I have seen. The book is worth buying for this alone.

Much of the book is devoted to historical analysis of events over the last few decades in Chile, Argentina, Russia, and the like. I don't have enough background in the recent history of these countries to be certain how much of what Klein describes is accurate. Her analysis strikes me as plausible enough, though, to be worth serious consideration at the very least.

I have a long-standing interest in economics, so that I feel qualified to comment on Klein's approach. Klein is quite correct that modern mainstream economics has lost its way. Mainstream economics worships the global free market, in the face of a remarkable lack of evidence that worldwide free markets make ordinary citizens happier or more prosperous. For more on this, I would suggest Robert Lane's book The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies. Most economic development schemes today assume that the best way to develop an economy is through increasing long-distance export and import. Unfortunately, basing a local economy on long-distance shipment of goods leaves a country's prosperity completely vulnerable to events occurring thousands of miles away. It also undermines local social cohesion, which is based in large part on local economic interdependence. The doctrine of comparative advantage, which is drummed into every first-year economics student today, takes none of this into account.

I have no quarrel with the idea that some government regulations are stupid and destructive. Some are. Unfortunately, many of today's politicians and economists are too lazy to do the necessary work to sort out which regulations are good and which bad. Therefore they want to toss out all government regulation and privatize as many government functions as possible. This idea is more dangerous than many people realize. Taken to an extreme, it is essentially feudalism.

One of Klein's main points is that for any country's economy, rapid change is usually extremely destructive. This is true even if the changes are valuable and necessary in themselves. I think Klein is convincing here.

Klein does miss some things. She puts too much emphasis on GDP as a measure of economic prosperity. The problem with GDP is that it is calculated essentially by counting up what people spend. GDP ignores population increases, the drawdown of natural resources, and declining quality of life. GDP is essentially the corporate view of what an economy should be like. Ordinary people should feel free to ignore GDP statistics.

Klein is correct that often the people do know better than corporations what they need. Unfortunately, in some cases the people have had the wool pulled over their eyes by corporations for so long that corporate-friendly policies are more popular than they should be. While Klein does not mention this, an example is the long-standing love affair of the American people with the automobile. Automobiles are great for corporations. Corporations build cars, parking lots, and highways. Unfortunately, a transportation system based largely on cars is extremely destructive to American cities, to social and family life, and even to government, which subsidizes cars to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars every year. Worse, this corporate-friendly transportation system has resulted in making the country utterly dependent on ever-shrinking oil reserves. For more on this, see James Kunstler's books The Geography of Nowhere: The Rise and Decline of America's Man-Made Landscape and The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century, and Donald Shoup's book The High Cost of Free Parking.

Overall, though, Klein's book should not be missed. Read it even if you don't agree.

In "Shock Doctrine," I nod my head in agreement of many of Klein's ideas- namely that deliberately creating or relishing in disaster to pursue corporate interests or to exploit a country's resources is horrifically unethical.

So what's the problem then?

Klein makes a strawman's argument that does not actually speak to anything Friedman actually believed or wrote. She is arguing against a phantom opponent, whose ideology she made up. This would be obvious to anybody who actually read his works, in which he makes a case for individual liberty free of government intrusion, eliminating government handouts or special deals for corporations, and and organized democratic process that reflects the will of the people, while maintaining individual rights. Klein gets the whole order reversed. Friedman never said that the fall of Communism should call for any foreign intervention to implement capitalism. He said that the failure of Communism RESULTED from the fact that people preferred to take control of the individual liberties that Communism once denied them. It was descriptive of the past, never prescriptive for the future. He descried imperialist takeoevers, corporate theft, or government usurption of power. To Friedman, the less power the better, especially because he knew that excess power disproportionately trampled on the rights of the poor. Friedman was suspicious of tyranny in all its forms, and believed that a government that gave special benefits to businesses (such as in eminent domain), over the property rights of the people, was despotic.

And saying that Friedman was happy with Katrina because afterwords individuals got to choose their schools is like saying that I'm happy that my dad died, because afterward I make sure to keep my health in check. Katrina was just one horrific example of how the government failed people. And criticizing the effectiveness of government, and the people demanding change after a tragedy like that is hardly celebrating the tragedy.
(It so happens, that according to polls, the parents and children in the new charter LA schools LOVE them, because they are now empowered to choose and control their education, rather than be forced to suffer the same garbage education the goverment usually imposes on poor kids).

Friedman believed that all actions should be voluntary and with consent, and that taking resources that belongs to the people of a particular region is nothing less than brutal theft.

All I ask for readers of this book is to read "Free to Choose" by Friedman. Then decide if you think he was fairly represented in this sloppily researched book. If you still believe Klein's interpretation Friedman's ideas are correct, so be it, but I highly doubt you will.

To conflate Chicago School economics with despotic governments, one must suspend objectivity and ignore contravening facts, as Ms. Klein has obviously done. And to insult perhaps the greatest intellectual freedom fighter of the 20th Century with this intellectually dishonest, leftist screed, is unforgiveable. I would very much like to see Ms. Klein debate the Peruvian economist Hernando DeSoto.

Read Capitalism and Freedom by Milton Friedman, Free to Choose by Milton and Rose Friedman, and The Mystery of Capital by Hernando DeSoto. In them you will find sound economic analyses and logic, none of which you will find in The Shock Doctrine.

Naomi Klein has done brilliant research as a journalist. With firsthand accounts and the use of primary resources she unveils the truth of the so-called "free market," and it's devastating effects on the world. She connects how intrinsically tied corporations and political players use coercive and sometimes brutally violent tactics to privatize public spheres and are in fact de-constructing democracy in all its forms. A must read.

This book is important, excellent and deeply moving. I think it's best read as an account of the origins of neoliberalism plus an inventory of the ways that neoliberal governments have undemocratically imposed unpopular, harmful economic "reforms" over the angry objections of their populations. Since almost all our politicians are neoliberals now, and since most Americans don't know what neoliberalism is (amazon.com's spell checker claims it's not even a word), this book should be widely read, though it may not be. It tells the story of the rise of the world's reigning economic ideology, and Klein zeroes in on what is perhaps that ideology's greatest contradiction: while neoliberals extol freedom of choice, populations that are free to choose reject neoliberalism. Thus, in a succinct, poignant and accurate formulation of Eduardo Galeano's that Klein repeatedly quotes, "People were in prison so that prices could be free." However, I found Klein's thesis-type thing, the parallels she draws between electroshock therapy and economic shock therapy, shocks to the body and shocks to the body politic, to be shallow and unconvincing. It's an analogy, not an analysis. With that said, Klein gave me a clearer understanding of the ANC's sellout than I had after studying abroad in South Africa, and her first 128 pages is the most powerful and moving passage of political writing I've ever read. So get it, read it and think about it: this is the history of the present.

Like the bullet hole on the cover of The Shock Doctrine the latest book by Naomi Klein, the author of 2000's No Logo, capitalism is a deadly rupture to our respective societies and economies. The book details how the best tool employed by modern practitioners of corporatism are natural or unnatural disasters that momentarily divert the population's focus and concentration. With deliberate and pre-arranged strategy the architects of what the author terms 'disaster capitalism' step into everywhere from Chile to New Orleans and Sri Lanka to South Africa to degrade and humiliate local populations through a series of shock therapies, which include enriching multi-national corporations, privatization and the suspension of freedoms and human rights. It is this last point - which capitalism is incompatible with a free and informed citizenry - that is dealt with in detail and is heavily explained in a far-reaching manner. The lines connecting capitalism instilled only when the population was looking the other way and the death of both political and economic control are staggering.

Naomi Klein retells the story of country after country in contemporary settings where right-wing policies of the infamous Chicago School translate into methodical torture (with a literal Canadian background no less), war and betrayal just as disaster and calamity visits a disoriented populace. Taking the last forty years into context and correlating Milton Friedman's economic theories, Klein manages to show a direct link between death and the dollar, coups and corporations and war and wage freezes for you and wage increase for the henchmen. The neo-liberals/conservatives/Reaganomists or fanatics of globalization advance the dangerous notions of the elimination of the public sector and freedom for corporations through "the full force of the US military machine." Quoting an oft openly sadistic Milton Friedman, Klein exposes the Shock Doctrine as a Machiavellian philosophy disdainful of government, communities and the grassroots in open warfare with a democratic state. A market opportunity, based on this model, is predicated on a disaster.

The book illustrates an inherent connection between repression and market economics through case studies of Chile (Pinochet's US-sponsored coup and his connections to Friedmanites), Brazil's dictatorships (disappearing thousands), Chinese 'reforms' (in the face of public protests and entailing the lifting of price controls and other impoverishing tactics), South Asia's tsunami (and the subsequent removal of indigenous villages and businesses to be replaced by tourist centres on the oceanfront), ANC's betrayal of South Africans (in response to the demands of the crashing local stock market and mining giants like DeBeers which moved its headquarters to Switzerland upon Nelson Mandela's release), the US invasion of Iraq (no-bid contracts and cost-plus darling deals) and ultimately hurricane Katrina (the closure of public schools in favour of Charter schools which quickly hired the former school system's teachers, albeit at a lower wage) and the events of 9/11 in the USA. Quoting from a Brazilian report on human rights violations called Brasil: Nunca Mais, "Since the economic policy was extremely unpopular among the most numerous sectors of the population, it had to be implemented by force."

Capitalism and improvements for the vast majority of peoples are incompatible. Unfortunately, as shock therapist economist Anders Åslund would say, "the miraculous temptations of capitalism conquer more or less anything." Absent from this rant is the qualification that miracles and temptations are illusory and everything, by definition, necessitates a population.
Shock And Awe, which was initially articulated by a US Navy strategist as a warfare manual would go on to better describe America and the Western world's larger declaration of war on all things not under its control.


The book is finally another widely circulated success for the Canadian author, albeit with its own flaws. Decrying the fanaticism of the market should have given the author pause to not quote from the bible. The book has shaped much of modern thought and been the ultimate enabler for the elite to rule over the population. On page 396, Klein commits a mistake better associated with the ignorant sectors of the market place by placing Iran on the list as "an Arab country." Moreover, Klein (very much like No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs) cannot help herself and has given credence to business-as-usual multi-national monopolim by publishing the book through just such a firm. That type of fallacy is more troubling than single instance geographical mistakes.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise Of Disaster Capitalism is modern history in motion and the perfect repudiation and retort to the apostles of liberalism, conservatism, capitalism and the unfettered arrogance of the so-called market. If only right-wingers could and would read it without prejudice. Implicated in the web of disaster capitalism are many lesser-known persons in The World bank, International Monetary Fund, military dictators and industry captains, as well as public personalities like Reagan, Bush, Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld, Cheney and Kissinger. Not so odd then that every cataclysmic event would be utilized by the aforenamed as a market opportunity to be exploited with the might of US' dollar and firepower.

The book quotes political scientist Alan Wolfe (calling him mistakenly Michael Wolfe) as written in Washington Monthly as saying: "Conservatives cannot govern well for the same reason that vegetarians cannot prepare a world-class boeuf bourguignon: If you believe that what you are called upon to do is wrong, you are unlikely to do it very well." Conservatism in government, politics and economics is a disaster as he so accurately explains. The Shock Doctrine explains how and why.

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.

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.

"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.

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.

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.