The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
『ショック・ドクトリン』は、カナダの作家で社会活動家であるナオミ・クラインの 2007 年の人気本の姉妹編です。 つまり、ショック・ドクトリンは、民営化、規制緩和、社会サービスの削減などの新自由主義的経済政策の実施において、武力、ステルス、危機がどのように利用されるかを説明している。
ショック・ドクトリンは、戦争、クーデター、自然災害、経済パニックに続く混乱期に、企業改革派が不人気な「自由市場」政策を積極的に推進することを示唆している。 クライン氏は、ミルトン・フリードマンやその他の市場原理主義者の信奉者たちが、まさにこの戦略を完成させてきたと主張する。重大な危機を待ち、国民がまだショックに動揺している間に国家の一部を民間業者に売却し、すぐに「改革」を恒久化するというものだ。
(English) The Shock Doctrine is a Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein's companion piece to her popular 2007 book. In short, the shock doctrine explains how force, stealth and crisis are used in implementing neoliberal economic policies such as privatization, deregulation and cuts to social services.The shock doctrine suggests that in periods of chaos often following wars, coups, natural disasters and economic panics, pro-corporate reformers aggressively push through unpopular "free market" measures. Klein posits that followers of Milton Friedman and other market fundamentalists have been perfecting this very strategy: waiting for a significant crisis, then selling off pieces of the state to private players while citizens were still reeling from the shock, then quickly making the "reforms" permanent.
The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Author: Naomi Klein
Country: Canada
Publication date: 2007
The Shock Doctrine [2009] Documentary by Naomi Klein
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The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is a 2007 book by Canadian author and social activist Naomi Klein.
In the book, Klein argues that neoliberal free-market policies (as advocated by the economist Milton Friedman) have come to the fore in some developed countries through a deliberate "shock therapy" strategy.
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This involves exploiting national crises (disasters or upheavals) to introduce controversial and questionable policies.
At the same time, citizens are too distracted (emotionally and physically) to engage, develop an adequate response and resist effectively.
The book advances the idea that artificial events, such as the Iraq war, were undertaken to push through such unpopular policies in their wake.
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Some reviewers criticised the book for what they saw as a simplification of political phenomena, while others praised it as a compelling and vital work. The book was the primary source for a 2009 documentary film of the same name, directed by Michael Winterbottom.
B)
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Synopsis
The book is divided into seven parts, totalling 21 chapters.
Part 1 begins with a chapter on psychiatric shock therapy and the covert experiments conducted by psychiatrist Ewen Cameron in collaboration with the Central Intelligence Agency.
The second chapter introduces Milton Friedman and his Chicago School of Economics, whom Klein describes as the leader of a laissez-faire capitalist movement committed to creating less regulated free markets than before the Great Depression.
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Part 2 discusses the use of 'shock doctrine' to transform South American economies in the 1970s, focusing on the 1973 coup in Chile led by General Augusto Pinochet and influenced by a prominent group of Chilean economists trained at the University of Chicago's economics department, funded by the CIA and advised by Milton Friedman.
Klein links torture to economic shock therapy.
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Part 3 looks at attempts to apply the shock doctrine without the need for extreme violence against sections of the population.
Klein says that Margaret Thatcher used mild shock 'therapy' facilitated by the Falklands War. Meanwhile, free market reform in Bolivia was made possible by a combination of pre-existing economic crises and the charisma of Jeffrey Sachs.
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Part 4 reports how Klein sees the shock doctrine applied in Poland, China, South Africa, Russia and the four Asian tigers.
In Poland, she discusses how the left-wing trade union Solidarity won the country's general elections in 1989 but then adopted the shock doctrine under pressure from the IMF.
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The section on China discusses the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests and the liberalisation of the Chinese economy. In South Africa, she explains how the negotiations to end apartheid led to economic policies against the Freedom Charter's core.
In Russia, she describes how Boris Yeltsin came to power after the collapse of the Soviet Union and created an economic policy that made the Russian oligarchs of 2020 possible.
Finally, she shows how, during the Asian financial crisis 1997, the tiger economies were forced to sell off many state-owned enterprises to private foreign companies.
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Part 5 introduces the "Disaster Capitalism Complex", a complex set of networks and influences private companies employ to profit from disasters.
It contrasts this new disaster capitalism complex with the military-industrial complex, explaining that both use the blurring of the line between private and public through tactics such as the revolving door.
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Part 6 discusses the use of 'shock and awe' in the 2003 invasion and subsequent occupation of Iraq, which Klein describes as the most comprehensive and full-scale application of the shock doctrine ever attempted, with the mass privatisation of Iraqi state enterprises (including the firing of thousands of men), which is argued to have contributed to the insurgency as many of the unemployed became embittered towards the US and subsequently joined insurgent groups.
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Part 7 is about the winners and losers of economic shock therapy - small groups often do very well by moving into luxurious gated communities.
At the same time, large sections of the population are left with decaying public infrastructure, falling incomes and increased unemployment.
Klein describes economic policies in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the 2004 tsunami in Sri Lanka and the Israeli government's apartheid-style policies towards the Palestinians.
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The conclusion details the backlash against the 'shock doctrine' and the economic institutions that Klein argues promote it - such as the World Bank and the IMF.
South America and Lebanon post-2006 are portrayed positively, where politicians are already rolling back free-market policies, with some mention of the increased campaigning by community-minded activists in South Africa and China.
The Shock Doctrine [2009] Documentary by Naomi Klein
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B3B5qt6gsxY
NHK 100 minutes de masterpiece "Shock Doctrine" [Mika Tsutsumi] Summary and summary of the book
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7QhPbWpU5js
Naomi Klein: how power profits from Disaster
https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2017/jul/06/naomi-klein-how-power-profits-from-disaster
The Shock Doctrine
https://www.imdb.com/video/vi3815966489/?playlistId=tt1355640&ref_=tt_pr_ov_vi
The Great Escape: Saket Soni and Naomi Klein In Conversation
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=APD7lLcYWGA
Naomi Klein: Coronavirus Capitalism - A Conversation About the Pandemic that Reshaped Our Lives
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z3v0Mwtqk9k
Naomi Klein: the hypocrisy behind the big business climate change battle
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/13/greenwashing-sticky-business-naomi-klein
Richard Branson has pledged $3bn to fight climate change and delivered just $230m. Naomi Klein looks at the 'greenwashing' of big business and its effects – on the planet, and our bodies
The Shock Doctrine - Wikipedia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Shock_Doctrine
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Naomi Klein: The hypocrisy behind big business's fight against climate change - Sat 13 Sep 2014
https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2014/sep/13/greenwashing-sticky-business-naomi-klein
Richard Branson has pledged $3 billion to fight climate change and delivered just $230 million. Naomi Klein looks at the 'greenwashing' of big business and its impact - on the planet and our bodies.
//Summary - Level-C2//
Naomi Klein critiques the hypocrisy of big businesses, particularly Richard Branson's Virgin Group, in their approach to climate change. Despite Branson's pledge of $3 billion to fight climate change, only $230 million has been delivered. Klein argues that the necessary measures to reduce emissions are fundamentally at odds with deregulated capitalism, the dominant ideology. She criticises the 'greenwashing' of businesses, where they publicly promote environmentally friendly initiatives but continue to contribute significantly to carbon emissions. Klein also highlights climate change's impact, including species' potential extinction and effects on future generations.
A)
1)
I've been aware of climate change for longer than I'd like to admit. I knew it was happening, of course. But I was pretty fuzzy on the details and only skimmed most of the news.
I told myself the science was too complicated and the environmentalists would deal with it. And I continued to behave as if nothing was wrong with the shiny card in my wallet attesting to my 'elite' frequent flyer status.
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Many of us engage in this kind of denial. We look for a split second, and then we look away. Or maybe we look, but then we forget. For perfectly rational reasons, we engage in this strange form of on-again, off-again ecological amnesia.
We deny it because we fear that letting in the whole reality of this crisis will change everything.
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And we are right. SupposeSuppose we continue on our current path, allowing emissions to rise year after year, in that case.
In that case, significant cities will drown, the seas will swallow ancient cultures, and our children will spend much of their lives fleeing and recovering from vicious storms and extreme droughts. Yet we carry on.
4)
What is wrong with us? I think the answer is much more straightforward than many have led us to believe: we have not done the things necessary to reduce emissions because those things are fundamentally at odds with deregulated capitalism, the dominant ideology for the entire time we have been struggling to find a way out of this crisis.
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We are stuck because the measures that would give us the best chance of avoiding catastrophe - and benefit the vast majority - are threatened by an elite minority with a stranglehold on our economy, political process and media.
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This problem might not have been insurmountable had it arisen at any other point in our history. But it is our collective misfortune that governments and scientists began talking seriously about radical cuts in greenhouse gas emissions in 1988 - the year that marked the dawn of "globalisation".
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The figures are striking: in the 1990s, as the project of market integration gathered pace, global emissions grew by an average of 1% a year; in the 2000s, as "emerging economies" such as China became fully integrated into the world economy, emissions growth accelerated catastrophically to 3.4% a year.
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This rapid growth rate has continued, interrupted only briefly in 2009 by the global financial crisis. The climate needs reduced human resource use; our economic model demands unfettered expansion. Only one of these rules can be changed, not the laws of nature.
9)
What gets me most is not the scary studies about melting glaciers, which I used to avoid. It's the books I read to my two-year-old. Looking For A Moose is one of his favourites. It's about a bunch of kids desperate to see a moose.
They search high and low - through a forest, a swamp, in brambly bushes and up a mountain. (The joke is that moose are hiding on every page.) Ultimately, the animals come out, and the ecstatic children proclaim, "We've never seen so many moose!"
It suddenly hit me about the 75th page: he might never see a moose.
10)
I went to my computer and started writing about my time in northern Alberta, Canada's tar sands country, where Beaver Lake Cree Nation members told me how the moose had changed.
One woman killed one on a hunting trip, only to find the flesh had turned green. I heard a lot about strange tumours, which the locals suspected were caused by the animals drinking water contaminated by tar sands toxins. But most of all, I heard about elk just disappearing.
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And not just in Alberta. Rapid climate change is turning the North Woods into a moose graveyard," read a headline in Scientific American in May 2012.
A year and a half later, the New York Times reported that one of Minnesota's two moose populations had dropped from 4,000 in the 1990s to just 100.
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Will my son ever see a moose?
We've been eager to look to technology and the market for saviours in our desire to deal with climate change without questioning growth logic. And the world's celebrity billionaires have been happy to play their part.
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In his autobiography/new age business manifesto Screw It, Let's Do It, Richard Branson tells the inside story of his road to Damascus conversion to the fight against climate change.
It was 2006, and Al Gore, on tour with An Inconvenient Truth, came to the billionaire's home to impress upon him the dangers of global warming."It was quite an experience," Branson writes.
"Listening to Gore, I realised we were facing Armageddon."
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He says his first move was to summon Will Whitehorn, then Virgin Group's corporate and brand development director. "We decided to change how Virgin operated at a corporate and global level.
We called this new approach Gaia Capitalism, in honour of James Lovelock and his revolutionary scientific view" (that the earth is "one giant living organism").
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Not only would Gaia Capitalism "help Virgin make a real difference over the next decade while not being ashamed to make money", but Branson believed it could become "a new way of doing business on a global scale".
B)
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Before the year was out, he was ready to make his grand entrance onto the green scene (and he knows how to make an entrance - by parachute, by jet ski, by hang gliding with a naked model strapped to his back).
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At the 2006 annual meeting of the Clinton Global Initiative in New York, the most consequential event in the philanthropic calendar, Branson pledged to spend $3 billion over the next decade on developing biofuels as an alternative to oil and gas and on other technologies to combat climate change.
The sum alone was staggering, but the most elegant part was where the money would come from: Branson would divert the funds generated by Virgin's fossil fuel-fired transport lines.
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In short, he was volunteering to do precisely what our governments have been unwilling to legislate: channel the profit from warming the planet into the costly transition away from these dangerous energy sources.
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Bill Clinton was dazzled, calling the pledge "groundbreaking". But Branson wasn't finished: a year later, h,e was back with the Virgin Earth Challenge - a $25 million prize for the first inventor to figure out how to remove 1 billion tonnes of carbon a year from the air "with no offsetting harmful effects".
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And the best part, he says, is that if these competing geniuses crack the carbon code, "the 'doom and gloom' scenario disappears.
We can deliver lives fairly normally - we can drive cars and fly planes". The idea that we can solve the climate crisis without changing our lifestyles - certainly not by taking fewer Virgin flights - seemed to underpin Branson's initiatives.
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In 2009, he set up the Carbon War Room, an industry group looking at how different sectors could voluntarily cut their emissions and save money.
Branson was a dream come true for many mainstream greens: a media darling out to show the world that fossil fuel-intensive companies can lead the way to a green future, using profit as their most powerful tool.
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Bill Gates and former New York mayor Michael Bloomberg have also aggressively used their philanthropy to shape climate solutions, the latter with large donations to green groups such as the Environmental Defense Fund and supposedly enlightened climate policies he introduced as mayor.
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But while he talks a good game about carbon bubbles and stranded assets, Bloomberg has made no discernible attempt to manage his vast wealth in a way that reflects these concerns.
Indeed, he helped set up Willett Advisors, a firm specialising in oil and gas assets, for his personal and philanthropic holdings.
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These gas assets may have increased in value due to his environmental giving - as EDF, for example, promotes natural gas as a replacement for coal. Perhaps there is no connection between his philanthropic priorities and his decision to entrust his fortune to the oil and gas sector.
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But these investment choices raise uncomfortable questions about his status as a climate hero and his 2014 appointment as UN Special Envoy for Cities and Climate Change (questions Bloomberg has not answered, despite my repeated requests).
Gates has a similar firewall between his mouth and his money. Despite his concern about climate change, the Gates Foundation had at least $1.2 billion invested in oil giants BP and ExxonMobil as of December 2013, and that's just the beginning of his fossil fuel holdings.
26)
When he had his epiphany about climate change, he too rushed to the prospect of a silver-bullet techno-fix without pausing to consider viable - if economically challenging - responses in the here and now.
In Ted Talks, op-eds, interviews and his annual letters, Gates repeats his call for governments to massively increase spending on research and development to unlock "energy miracles".
27)
By miracles, he means nuclear reactors yet to be invented (he is a significant investor and chairman of nuclear start-up TerraPower), machines to suck carbon out of the atmosphere (he is a substantial investor in at least one such prototype), and direct climate manipulation (Gates has spent millions funding research into systems to block the sun, and his name is on several patents to suppress hurricanes).
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At the same time, he has been dismissive of the potential of existing renewable technologies, writing off energy solutions such as rooftop solar as "cute" and "uneconomical" (these cute technologies already provide 25% of Germany's electricity).
C)
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Almost a decade after Branson's epiphany, it seems a good time to take stock of the "win-win" crusade.
Let's start with his "firm commitment" to spend $3 billion over a decade developing a miracle fuel.
The first tranche of money he diverted from his transport divisions was used to launch Virgin Fuels (now replaced by the Virgin Green Fund private equity firm).
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He began by investing in various agrofuel companies, including a $130m bet on corn ethanol. Virgin has lent its name to several biofuel pilot projects - one to produce jet fuel from eucalyptus trees, another from fermented gas waste - although it has not invested in them.
But Branson admits the miracle fuel "hasn't been invented yet", and the fund has shifted its focus to a grab-bag of green-tinged products.
31)
Diversifying his holdings to get a slice of the green market hardly seems worth the fanfare that Branson's original announcement generated, especially as the investments have been so unremarkable.
If he is to fulfil his $3 billion pledge by 2016, he should have spent at least $2 billion by then. He's not even close.
32)
According to Virgin Green Fund partner Evan Lovell, Virgin has only put about $100m into the pot, on top of its original ethanol investment, bringing Branson's total investment to about $230m. (Lovell confirmed that "we are the primary vehicle" for Branson's pledge).
32)
Branson refused to answer my direct questions about how much he had spent, writing that 'it is tough to quantify the total amount... across the group'. He now describes his original "pledge" as a "gesture". In 2009, he told Wired magazine, "In some ways, whether it's $2 billion, $3 billion or $4 billion isn't particularly relevant".
33)
When the deadline comes, he told me, "I suspect it will be less than $1 billion right now," blaming the shortfall on everything from high oil prices to the global financial crisis: "The world was very different in 2006... Over the last eight years, our airlines have lost hundreds of millions of dollars."
34)
Given these explanations for the shortfall, it is worth looking at some of the things Branson has managed to find money for.
In 2007, a year after seeing the climate light, he launched the domestic airline Virgin America. From 40 flights daily to five destinations in the first year, it reached 177 flights to 23 goals in 2013.
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At the same time, passengers on Virgin's Australian airlines rose from 15 million in 2007 to 19 million in 2012. In 2009, Branson launched a new long-haul airline, Virgin Australia, followed in April 2013 by Little Red, a UK domestic airline.
36)
So here's what he's done since his climate change pledge: gone on a procurement spree that has seen his airlines' greenhouse gas emissions rise by around 40%.
And it's not just planes: Branson has launched Virgin Racing to compete in Formula One (he claimed he only entered the sport because he saw opportunities to make it greener, but quickly lost interest) and invested heavily in Virgin Galactic, his dream of commercial flights into space for $250,000 per passenger.
According to fortune, by early 2013, Branson had spent "more than $200 million" on this vanity project.
37)
It can be argued - and some do - that Branson's planet-saving persona is an elaborate attempt to avoid the kind of stern regulatory action on the horizon at the time of his green conversion.
In 2006, public concern about climate change was rising dramatically, particularly in the UK, where young activists used bold, direct action to oppose new airports and the proposed new runway at Heathrow.
38)
At the same time, the UK government was considering sweeping legislation that would hit the airline industry; the then chancellor, Gordon Brown, had sought to discourage flying with a slight increase in air passenger duty. These measures posed a significant threat to Branson's profit margins.
39)
So was Branson's reinvention as a guilt-ridden planet-wrecker volunteering to solve the climate crisis little more than a cynical ploy?
Suddenly you could feel good about flying again - after all, the profits from that ticket to Barbados would help discover a miracle green fuel. It was an even more effective conscience cleaner than carbon offsets (although Virgin was selling those too).
40)
As for regulations and taxes, who wanted to stop an airline from supporting such a good cause?
This has always been Branson's argument: "If you hold back industry, we as a nation won't have the resources to find the clean energy solutions we need."
His green talk has become less eloquent since David Cameron came to power and clarified that climate regulation did not seriously threaten fossil fuel companies.
41)
There is a more charitable interpretation of what has gone wrong.
This would give Branson credit for his love of the outdoors (whether watching tropical birds on his private island or ballooning over the Himalayas) and for genuinely trying to find ways to reconcile running carbon-intensive businesses with a desire to help slow species extinction and avert climate chaos.
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It would also acknowledge that he has devised some creative mechanisms to channel profits into projects that could help keep the planet cool.
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But if we give him credit for these good intentions, the fact that all these projects have failed to deliver is all the more critical. He set out to use the profit motive to solve the crisis, but time and again, the demands of building a successful empire trumped the climate imperative.
D)
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The idea that only capitalism can save the world from a crisis of its own making is no longer an abstract theory; it's a hypothesis tested in the real world.
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We can now take a hard look at the results: at the green products relegated to the back of supermarket shelves at the first sign of recession; at the venture capitalists who were supposed to fund a parade of innovation but have fallen far short; at the fraud-ridden, boom-and-bust carbon market that has failed to cut emissions.
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And, most of all, at the billionaires who set out to invent a new form of enlightened capitalism but, on second thoughts, decided that the old one was just too profitable to give up.
47)
At some point about seven years ago, I realised that I had become so convinced that we were heading for a grim ecological collapse that I was losing my ability to enjoy my time in nature.
The more beautiful the experience, the more I found myself mourning its loss - like someone who can't entirely fall in love because they can't stop imagining the inevitable heartbreak.
48)
Looking out at British Columbia's Sunshine Coast, an ocean bay teeming with life, I would suddenly imagine it barren - the eagles, herons, seals and otters all gone.
It got worse after I covered the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico in 2010: I couldn't look at a body of water without imagining it covered in oil for two years after that.
49)
This ecological despair was a big part of why I resisted having children until my late 30s.
Around the time I started working on my book, my attitude began to change. Some of it was, no doubt, standard denial (what's the point of having another child?).
50)
But it was also that immersing myself in the international climate movement helped me imagine different futures that were less bleak. And I was lucky: I got pregnant the first month we started trying.
But then, just as quickly, my luck ran out. A miscarriage. An ovarian tumour. A cancer scare. An operation. Month after month of disappointing single pink lines on pregnancy tests. Another miscarriage.
51)
Coincidentally, the five years it took to write my book were the same years that my personal life was consumed with failed pharmaceutical and technological interventions and, finally, pregnancy and new motherhood.
At first, I tried to keep these parallel journeys separate, but it didn't always work. The worst part was the constant invocation of our responsibility to 'our children'. I knew these expressions were heartfelt and not meant to be exclusionary, but I couldn't help feeling excluded.
52)
But along the way, that feeling changed. It's not that I got in touch with my inner earth mother; I began to realise that if the earth is indeed our mother, she is a mother with many fertility challenges.
53)
I had no idea I was pregnant when I went to Louisiana to cover the BP oil spill. But a few days after I got home, I could tell something was wrong, so I took a pregnancy test.
Two lines this time, but the second was strangely weak. "You can't be just a little bit pregnant," they say. And yet I seemed to be.
54)
After more tests, my doctor told me my hormone levels were far too low and that I'd probably miscarry for the third time.
My mind returned to the Gulf - the toxic fumes I had breathed for days and the contaminated water I had waded in.
I researched the chemicals BP used in huge quantities and found reams of online chatter linking them to miscarriages. Whatever was happening, I had no doubt it was my fault.
55)
After a week of monitoring, the pregnancy was diagnosed as ectopic - the embryo had implanted outside the womb, most likely in a fallopian tube. I was taken to the emergency room.
The somewhat gruesome treatment is one or more injections of methotrexate, a drug used in chemotherapy to stop cell development (which has many side effects). Once foetal development has stopped, the pregnancy will miscarry, which can take weeks.
56)
It was a brutal, prolonged loss for my husband and me. But it was also a relief to learn that the miscarriage had nothing to do with the Gulf.
Knowing that, however, made me think a little differently about my time covering the oil spill.
As I waited for the pregnancy to 'dissolve', I believed about a long day spent on the Flounder Pounder, a boat a group of us had chartered to look for evidence of oil entering the marshes.
57)
Our guide was Jonathan Henderson of the Gulf Restoration Network, a heroic local organisation dedicated to repairing the damage done to the wetlands by the oil and gas industry.
As we navigated the narrow bayous of the Mississippi Delta, Henderson leaned far over the side to get a better look at the bright green grass. What worried him most was not what we saw - fish jumping in polluted water, Roseau cane covered in oil - but something much harder to see without a microscope and specimen jars.
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Spring is the start of the spawning season along the Gulf Coast. Henderson knew these marshes were teeming with almost invisible zooplankton and tiny juveniles that would grow into adult shrimp, oysters, crabs and finfish.
During these fragile weeks, the marsh grass acts as an aquatic incubator, providing nutrients and protection from predators. "Everything is born in these wetlands," he said.
59)
The outlook for these microscopic creatures was not good. Each wave brought more oil and dispersants, soaring carcinogenic polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs).
And it was all happening at the worst possible time in the biological calendar: not just crustaceans, but bluefin tuna, grouper, snapper, mackerel, marlin and swordfish were spawning.
60)
Out in the open water, floating clouds of translucent proto-life were waiting for one of the countless plumes of oil and dispersants to pass like an angel of death. Unlike the oil-covered pelicans and sea turtles, these deaths would not attract media attention or be counted in official assessments of the spill's damage.
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If a particular species of larvae were about to be wiped out, we would probably not know about it for years, and then, instead of a camera-ready mass die-off, there would be... nothing. An absence. A hole in the cycle of life.
62)
As our boat bobbed in that awful place - the sky buzzing with Black Hawk helicopters and snowy white herons - I had the distinct feeling that we were not in water but in amniotic fluid, immersed in a massive multi-species miscarriage.
63)
When I learned that I was in the early stages of creating an unhappy embryo, I began to think of that time in the marsh as my miscarriage within a miscarriage.
Then, I let go of the idea that infertility made me exiled from nature and began to feel what I can only describe as a kinship with the infertile.
E)
64)
A few months after I stopped attending the fertility clinic, a friend recommended a naturopathic doctor. This practitioner had her theories about why so many women were having trouble conceiving for no apparent medical reason.
65)
She said that carrying a baby is one of the most complex physical tasks we can ask of ourselves. When our bodies refuse to do it, it is often a sign that they face too many other demands - stressful jobs, the physical stress of eliminating toxins, or just the pressures of modern life.
66)
Most fertility clinics use drugs and technology to overcome this, and they work for many people. But when they don't (and often don't), women are often left even more stressed, their hormones even more out of whack.
67)
The naturopath suggested the opposite approach: find out what might overload my system and remove those things. After a series of tests, I was diagnosed with a mess of allergies I didn't know I had, as well as adrenal insufficiency and low cortisol levels.
The doctor asked me many questions, including how many hours I had spent in the air in the past year. "Why?" I asked cautiously. "Because of the radiation. Some studies done with flight attendants show it might not be good for fertility."
68)
I admit I was far from convinced that this approach would result in a pregnancy or that the science behind it was entirely sound. On the other hand, the worst that could happen was that I'd be healthier in the end. So I did it all.
The yoga, the meditation, the dietary changes (the usual wars on wheat, gluten, dairy and sugar, plus more esoteric minutiae). I went to acupuncture and drank bitter Chinese herbs; my kitchen counter became a gallery of powders and supplements.
I left Toronto for rural British Columbia. This is the part of the world where my parents live, where my grandparents are buried.
69)
Gradually I learnt to identify half a dozen birds by sound and sea mammals by the ripples on the water's surface. My frequent flyer status expired for the first time in a decade, and I was glad.
For the first few months, the pregnancy's hardest part was believing everything was normal. No matter how many tests returned reassuring results, I remained prepared for tragedy.
What helped the most was walking, and in those last anxious weeks, I calmed my nerves by walking as long as my sore hips would allow me on a path along a pristine stream.
70)
I would keep my eyes peeled for silvery salmon smolts making their way to the sea after months of incubation in shallow estuaries. And I imagined the cohos, pinks and chums fighting the rapids and falls, determined to reach the spawning grounds where they were born.
That was my son's determination, I would say to myself. He was a fighter, having found his way to me against all odds; he would find a way to be born safely.
71)
I don't know why this pregnancy succeeded more than I understand why previous pregnancies failed - and neither do my doctors. Infertility is one of the many areas where humans face our oceans of ignorance. So most of the time, I feel lucky.
72)
And I suppose part of me is still in that oiled Louisiana swamp, floating in a sea of poisoned larvae and embryos, with my unlucky seed inside me. It's not self-pity that keeps me returning to that sad place.
It's the conviction that there is something valuable in the body - the memory of hitting a biological limit - of running out of chances - something we all need to learn.
73)
We are built to survive, endowed with adrenaline and embedded with multiple physical redundancies, allowing us the luxury of second, third and fourth chances. So are our oceans. So is the atmosphere.
74)
But surviving is not the same as thriving, not the same as living well. For many species, it's not the same as being able to nurture and produce new life.
With proper care, we stretch and bend amazingly well. But we also break - our bodies and the communities and ecosystems that support us.
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Naomi Klein: How to Resist Trump's Shock Doctrine
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTcELLklap4
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I don't think I could sit down right; you need historic, astounding, shocking, a word that's come up a lot since November for obvious reasons; it will inject a shock into the system now.
I've spent much time thinking about Sean; ten years ago, I published The Shock Doctrine, an investigation that spanned four decades from Pinochet's US back to the 1970s Chile to Fruit Cain Katrina in 2005.
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I noticed a brutal and recurring tactic by right-wing governments after a shocking event, a war, an attack, a crash, public disorientation, suspend democracy, and push through radical policies that enrich the 1% at the expense of the poor and middle class.
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After a shocking event, a war, a terrorist attack, a market crash, or a natural disaster, exploit the public's disorientation, suspend democracy, and push through radical policies that enrich the 1% at the expense of the poor and middle class.
Repeal and replace Obamacare; cut taxes and simplify the tax code; withdraw the United States from the Paris Climate Accord; now, some people have said that is precisely what Trump is doing.
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Now some people have said that's precisely what Trump has been trying to do, is it true, sort of, but in all likelihood, the worst is yet to come, and we'd better be ready.
The administration is creating chaos with daily breaking news. Donald Trump's national security adviser Michael Flynn suddenly resigned tonight.
The White House is concerned about James Talmadge's handling of Hillary Clinton's emails. A Senate committee will question President Trump's son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared in Now.
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Of course, many scandals result from the president's ignorance and blunders rather than some nefarious strategy. Still, there's also no doubt that some savvy people around Trump are using the daily shocks as cover to push ahead wildly.
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Pro-corporate policies that bear little resemblance to what Trump promised on the campaign trail to save Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security: The White House has released its budget for 2018, and among the four trillion dollars in cuts it proposes are billions upon billions of dollars from both Medicaid and Social Security.
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And worst of all, this is probably just the warm-up we need to focus on what this administration will do when explaining a significant external shock: maybe it'll be an economic crash like 2008 or a natural disaster like Sandy.
Maybe it'll be a horrific terrorist event like Manchester or Paris in 2015, any one of these crises.
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It could redraw the political map overnight and give Trump and his crew free rein to run through their most extreme ideas.
But here's one thing I've learned over two decades of reporting from dozens of crises worldwide: these tactics can be resisted for convenience.
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I'll try to boil it down to a five-step plan.
Step 1: NOW WHAT'S COMING
Based on Trump's apparent penchant for authoritarianism, we can expect them to declare some state of emergency where the usual rules of democracy don't apply.
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Protests and strikes that block roads and airports, such as those that have sprung up to oppose a Muslim travel ban, would likely be declared a threat to national security.
Protest organisers would be targeted under anti-terror legislation; surveillance would be erratic, and the government would be constantly in flux.
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Anti-terror legislation, with unpredictable lookout and imprisonment for public signs of dissent, would quickly fill the lethally toxic todo list, bring in the Fed to calm the streets, and muzzle investigative journalism.
He's itching to do our golf and sit down at the course. Trump would inevitably blame for the attacks and might well lose their nerve.
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And the most deadly shock we need to prepare for is a push for a total blown foreign war.
Full-blown foreign war, and no, it won't matter if the target has no connection to the attacks used to justify it.
But in Iraq, after nothing, preparing for all this is crucial.
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Step 2: GET OT OF YOUR HOME AND DEFY THE BANS
If we know what to expect, we won't be so shocked; we'll just be pissed, and that's important for step two get out of your home and define it when governments tell people to stay in their homes or show their patriotism by going shopping they inevitably claim it's for security, protests and rallies could be targeted for more attacks.
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When governments tell people to stay in their homes or show their patriotism by shopping, they inevitably claim it's for public safety and that protests and rallies could become targets for more attacks.
We know from other countries that there's only one way to respond. Hundreds of Tunisians have been defined with a curfew in the capital Tunis, disobeying or masking what would happen in Argentina in 2001.
With the country and economic freefall, the president at the time declared a state of siege, giving himself the power to take over the country.
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The president at the time said a state of siege, giving himself the power to suspend the constitution, decreeing todo el estado de sitio in todos the Victoria Nacional.
He told the public to stay in their homes; here's what they did instead. The president resigned that night, and eventually, new elections were held three years later in Madrid horrific series of coordinated attacks on trained killed more than 200 pieces of the prime minister.
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Jose Maria Aznar falsely pointed the finger at Basque separatists and used the attacks to justify his decision to send troops to Iraq.
His rhetoric was classic Shock Doctrine division war fear daddy will protect you. That's how the Spaniards responded.
They voted out dozens a few days later. Many people said they did it because he reminded them of Franco, Spain's former dictator, which brings us to
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Step 3: KNOW YOUR HISTORY
You know your history. Throughout US history, national crises have been used to suspend constitutional protections and attack fundamental rights after the civil war.
With the nation in trouble, the promise of 40 acres and a mule to free enslaved people was promptly betrayed amid the pain and panic of the Great Depression.
Up to 2 million people of Mexican descent were expelled from the United States after the attacks on pearl harbour. Around 120,000 Japanese Americans were imprisoned and interned.
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If an attack on US soil were perpetrated by people who weren't white and Christian, we can be pretty damn sure that racists would have a field day, and the good people of Manchester recently showed us how to react to pornography.
Don't worry, your son, about your race is something else we know from history.
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Step 4: ALWAYS FOLLOW THE MONEY
Always follow the money. While everyone is focused on security and civil liberties, Trump's cabinet of billionaires will try to. We're auctioning off significant parts of the government for profit.
"Today, we're proposing to take American air travel into the future. "
At those moments when fear and chaos are sucking up all the oxygen, we must ask whose interests are being served by the disorder, what's slipping through while we're distracted, who's getting richer and who's getting poorer.
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"When the floodwaters were still rising in New Orleans, the governor's first act was to fire all the teachers.
What was happening was looting the money set aside for public education to be given to private companies."
It wasn't by accident. By design, you saw the political manipulation and the exploitation of the crisis, but we can learn from history and make history.
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Step 5: ADVANCE A BOLD COUNTER-PLAN
But if we learn from this history, we could make history with Step Five by putting forward a bold counter-plan.
At their best, all the previous steps can only slow down the attempts to exploit the crisis.
If we want to defeat the tactic, opponents of the shock doctrine need to move quickly to put forward a credible alternative plan.
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This means talking about militarism, climate change and deregulated markets, but more than that, we need to advance and fight for different models based on racial, economic and gender justice.
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The credible promise of a tangibly better and fairer life in the here and now, and a safer planet for all of us in the long term, defensive measures alone won't do.
There has to be a different vision, and it has to be bold. Saying no to the shock doctrine is vital, but no is not enough when the chips are down.