And this year I give thanks for....Naomi Klein!

I was sitting there having a thoroughly wretched Thanksgiving, wondering in God's name what exactly our country's economy will look like in six months. To escape my mood, I put in a DVD I picked up at Bellingham's  Film is Truth 24 Times a Second : "The Rise of Disaster Capitalism" by economist/journalist Naomi Klein .  The film is a British speech and interview that explains her wildly successful "The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism".  In the film and the follow on interview, Ms. Klein drives home an important series of points:

(1) The series of unending political and economic crises that the world has been repeatedly subjected to in the last 10 years is designed to numb and shock us so that
(2) political and economic profiteers can usurp and profiteer and remake the world to their best interests (e.g. Afghanistan, Iraq, Burma, New Orleans).
(3) The current economic crisis is just another economic shock under the rise of disaster capitalism.

This puts all the unemployment, foreclosures, "border line criminal" bailouts of the last year into perspective:  The bailout has been designed to impoverish us and disempower us while we suffer the shock  of unemployment and foreclosure and bankruptcy.  Also, Matt Taibbi searing article on Obama's recovery for the rich is in this month's Rolling Stone.

Happy Thanksgiving!