She’s right: Argentina’s mass looting was called El Saqueo—the sacking. That was politically significant because it was the very same word used to describe what that country’s elites had done by selling off the country’s national assets in flagrantly corrupt privatization deals, hiding their money offshore, then passing on the bill to the people with…
A disaster strikes (man-made or otherwise) and governments and businesses look to take advantage of the crisis. Canadian writer Naomi Klein has written a book about it and I’m currently working on a book that examines similar issues. A regular reader of my work has informed me that New Zealand is undergoing something akin to…
I’m currently working on a book about disaster capitalism and rampant privatisation, diseases that seemingly sweep all before it. The idea that selling everything into private hands will solve our economic problems is ludicrous and yet both major sides of politics in many Western states back the idea. Resistance is key, so here’s Paul Krugman…
John Pilger on Britain’s disaster capitalism: These days, the stirring lines of Percy Shelley’s The Mask of Anarchy may seem unattainable. I don’t think so. Shelley was both a Romantic and political truth-teller. His words resonate now because only one political course is left to those who are disenfranchised and whose ruin is announced on…
Privatisation is the opium of the masses (well, a few men in suits who love the smell of burning unions in the morning). Democracy Now! reports on moves to privatise the American postal service under the guise of improving efficiency but is this yet another move by corporate crack fiends to allegedly reduce costs and…
Naomi Klein on how her thesis is morphing into something even deadlier (via Democracy Now!): AMY GOODMAN: We only have 30 seconds. You published Shock Doctrine in 2007. So much of what you’ve predicted has come to pass. Final words? NAOMI KLEIN: Look, my fear is that climate change is the crisis, the biggest crisis…
Professor Joseph Stiglitz, US economist and former senior vice-president of the World Bank asks Naomi Klein, author, a question at the recent Hay literary festival: Q In The Shock Doctrine, you talk about how free-market fundamentalists use economic crises to impose policies they would not normally be able to put into place. What do you…
My review in today’s The Saturday Paper newspaper about Naomi Klein’s new book, Doppelgänger: We all know people who have vanished into a world of conspiracy and disinformation. This is more extreme than believing, for example, that the 1969 Apollo 11 moon landing was faked or that the 9/11 terror attacks in New York and…
A great review of my book, The Palestine Laboratory, in the literary journal, Meanjin, by Vanessa Francesca places my work in an historical context (and recognises the bulk of my writing over the last 20 years from Palestine to disaster capitalism): In 2006, Antony Loewenstein’s debut book My Israel Question caused a stir among Australian…
US outlet Truthout has picked my book, Disaster Capitalism: Making A Killing Out Of Catastrophe, as an important title. Here’s my Q&A: The following is a Truthout interview with Antony Loewenstein, the author of… Disaster Capitalism:… Making a Killing Out of Catastrophe. Mark Karlin: Naomi Klein praises your book effusively. How were you galvanized by her book,… The… Shock… Doctrine:…