Read Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine. Today.
It's true it has taken me a while to get to it. Apologies if you are way ahead of me on this as I have been obsessing with the world of fiction for the past couple of years. Meanwhile Canadian writer extraordinaire Klein has exposed the fiction around the way the world appears to work today.
But the paperback version of this "scary as hell" (John Le Carre) but true book came available at the Blackheath Village Library in southeast London and I grabbed it. Read it. Loved it.
If you want to understand the Iraq invasion and occupation, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand Israeli politics, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand the truly shocking debate around healthcare in the United States, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand Katrina, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand the political debate on the road to the election in the United Kingdom right now, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand the political debate on the road to the possible election in Canada, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand what is happening around HIV and AIDS, climate change, militarism, poverty and hunger in all their various permeations around the world, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to get at the deepest spiritual, theological and political issues facing the planet today, read The Shock Doctrine.
If you want to understand what is happening in your own city, borough or backyard, read The Shock Doctrine.
Better than anyone else, Klein gets to the heart, the ideology and the soulessness of the current ruthless brand of capitalism and its inherent blessing of the very few and the hell with the rest of us, and exposes its darkest secrets.
But all is not lost. There is power in the knowing, in the understanding, in the reading, in the debating, in the speaking out, in the acting out, in the organizing.
Read The Shock Doctrine. Today.
Tomorrow's too late.
Blackheath Canuck
ps Our own man on a wire, LC, has survived to sing another day. We wish him only good things as he continues his journey. As he has said, "It might be difficut, but be kind today." Indeed.
