Customer Reviews: Read 5 more reviews...
 A Must-read July 17, 2008
This is a wonderfully readable, depressing, and very persuasive account. It's not a rant. Highly recommended.
Everyone should read this book July 1, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
I had not expected Klein's book to be this good. We learn a lot here about how the Chicago School of Economics (as pioneered by Milton Friedman) has been responsible for some of the most atrocious political crimes of the last 4 decades. Crimes that were committed not only against the body politic of developing nations but also the bodies of human beings tortured under dictatorships.
Everyone who doubts that America has blood on its hands for its interference in world affairs (e.g. Chile, Iran, Russia, Argentina) needs to open their eyes. Democracy and Free Markets do not go hand-in-hand as Bush and the Neo-Cons would have you believe, but quite the opposite: wherever Chicago economists have sought to imopose their brand of capitalism it has been enforced with blood.
An uproarious wake up call! June 22, 2008
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.
Fantastic thoroughly researched book June 5, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The Shock Doctrine is a wonderful book exposing the truth behind the basis of modern day big business 'corporatism' and globalisation for what it really is - a process which has the effect of redistributing wealth from the already poor to the rich, and through manipulation and outright brute force takes advantage of any opportunity to effect this change. It is common knowledge how the rich-poor divide is growing incredibly nowadays, with so many corporations and individuals generating staggering wealth on the backs of poor people getting poorer (a matter of life and death in so many parts of the world)- this book gets into the details of how this is being manipulated. It is thoroughly researched and contains information that should be headlined in the media, but unfortunately is not due to the modern corporate media and its financial interests and alignments and the image of the corporate business world they wish to convey. A great read.
dynamite for the brain May 26, 2008
8 out of 11 found this review helpful
Read this without bias and preconceptions and you will be unable to deny the evidence of the text.
This book lays bare the underhand strategies of the elites and corporatists who are far along on their agenda of privatisng the world in such a way that before we know what's happening the middle class becomes a memory and ownership of all resources and companies are concentrated in ever less hands.
How are they doing this, by using The World Bank, the IMF, extremely right wing (with vested interests) economists, and the CIA to pursue what appears on the surface as a political ideology and agenda but which is revealed upon further inspection to be a fire sale of national assets and an obliteration of a stable successful middle class, which promoted the social capitalistic model, and that was so instrumental in the past in ridding poverty, raising wages, reducing inflation, providing good healthcare, education and infrastructure.
This book is amongst the most thoroughly researched texts I have ever read. It is dynamite for the Brain that should be required reading for EVERYONE.
Any current and future reviews of this text that rant against it, slag off Naomi, and proclaim it's reaearch is wrong can easily be discredited by a little personal research. Masses of unimpeachable information is readily available on the net not only supports this text but suggests that Naomi's research paints a picture that is more optimistic and less dire than what is actually the current reality.
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