by Naomi Klein
In addition to the researchers who worked directly on this project, many activists and writers helped me along the way. The incredible team members at Focus on the Global South in Bangkok were the first to identify “reconstruction” as the new frontier of neocolonialism, an extension of their longtime work on the exploitation of crises. I am particularly grateful to the acuity of Shalmali Guttal and Walden Bello. For their outstanding investigations exposing disaster capitalism in New Orleans, I am indebted to Chris Kromm and the team at the Institute for Southern Studies as well as to the writings and activism of the human rights lawyer Bill Quigley. Soren Ambrose, formerly of Fifty Years Is Enough, was a tremendous resource on the international financial institutions. My research on contemporary prisoner abuse was greatly aided by Michael Ratner and the courageous team at the Center for Constitutional Rights, as well as John Sifton and Human Rights Watch, the reports of Amnesty International and Jameel Jaffer at the American Civil Liberties Union.
Many of the declassified documents cited in the text were unearthed by the extraordinary people at the National Security Archive. Another important resource has been the interviews from PBS’s 2002 documentary trilogy Commanding Heights: The Battle for the World Economy. Most of the quotations that appear in the text did not make it into the films, but the producers made the rare decision to put their raw interview transcripts online. I am also grateful to Amy Goodman and the entire team at Democracy Now! Their groundbreaking interviews are not only an addictive source of daily news (www.democracynow.org), but a precious ongoing research tool.
Hundreds of other investigative journalists and authors whose work I draw on are acknowledged in the text and the endnotes. An extensive bibliography can be accessed through www.naomiklein.org, with direct links to many original documents. A few books were of such tremendous and repeated help that endnotes and bibliographies don’t suffice to indicate their importance: Stephen F. Cohen’s Failed Crusade, Alfred McCoy’s A Question of Torture, Anthony Shadid’s Night Draws Near, Rajiv Chandrasekaran’s Imperial Life in the Emerald City, Marguerite Feitlowitz’s A Lexicon of Terror, Michael McCaughan’s True Crimes: Rodolfo Walsh, Lawrence Weschler’s A Miracle, a Universe, Greg Grandin’s Empire’s Workshop, T. Christian Miller’s Blood Money, Antonia Juhasz’s Bush Agenda, Juan Gabriel Valdés’s Pinochet’s Economists, Peter Reddaway and Dmitri Glinski’s The Tragedy of Russia’s Reforms, William Mervin Gumede’s Thabo Mbeki and the Battle for the Soul of the ANC, Joseph E. Stiglitz’s Globalization and Its Discontents, Judith Butler’s Precarious Life, John Perkins’s Confessions of an Economic Hitman, Peter Kornbluh’s The Pinochet File and John Pilger’s The New Rulers of the World, among many of his other works. I am also in debt to many documentary filmmakers whose footage helped me to understand events that I was not able to witness firsthand. Patricio Guzmán’s definitive trilogy The Battle of Chile demands particular mention.
Several theorists and chroniclers of neoliberalism have shaped my thinking well beyond what citations can reflect: David Harvey (particularly A Brief History of Neoliberalism), and pretty much everything ever written by John Berger, Mike Davis and Arundhati Roy. When I read and reread the work of Eduardo Galeano I feel as if everything has been said. I hope that he will forgive my attempts here to put a few asterisks in the margin, just to emphasize the point.
I also want to honor five exquisitely diverse models of the engaged, enraged intellectual, each one a personal hero of mine, who passed away while I was writing this book. The loss of Susan Sontag, John Kenneth Galbraith, Molly Ivins, Jane Jacobs and Kurt Vonnegut will, for me as for so many others, be difficult to bear.
The following people all lent a hand: Misha Klein, Nancy Friedland, Anthony Arnove, John Montesano, Esther Kaplan, John Cusack, Kashaelle Gagnon, Stefan Christoff, Kamil Mahdi, Pratap Chatterjee, Sara Angel, Manuel Rozenthal, John Jordan, Justin Podur, Jonah Gindin, Ewa Jasiewicz, Maude Barlow, Justin Alexander, Jeremy Pikser, Ric Young, Arthur Manuel, Joe Nigrini, David Wall, John Greyson, David Meslin, Carly Stasko, Brendan Martin, Bill Fletcher, David Martinez, Joseph Huff-Hannon, Ofelia Whiteley, Barr Gilmore and my patient colleagues at the New York Times Syndicate, Gloria Anderson and Mike Oricchio.
Roger Hodge sent me to Iraq for Harper’s, on assignment for the piece that turned into this book, and Sharon Oddie Brown and Andreas Schroeder set me up in their perfect writer’s cabin when I returned. I am, as always, grateful to Katrina vanden Heuvel, Peter Rothberg and Hamilton Fish for making The Nation feel like home.
It may take a village to raise a child, but looking at this long list, I realize that it took a global conspiracy to make this book. I’m so fortunate to have been supported by this amazing web of humanity.
INDEX
Abdullah, Ahmed
Abramoff, Jack
Abu Ghraib (prison)
Accenture
Action Against Hunger
ActionAid (NGO)
Acuña, Claudia
Ad Hoc Committee on Chile (U.S. corporate)
Adam Smith Institute (U.K.)
addiction (alcohol and drug), in Russia
Afghanistan
African National Congress (ANC)
See also Freedom Charter
Agresto, John
Ahmed, Rhuhel
aid (developmental/foreign). See debt (government); disaster relief; foreign aid
AIDS
crisis, in Russia
patents for medicines treating
in South Africa
AIG (Corp.)
Albats, Yevgenia
Albright, Madeleine
Alexander, Jane
A Lexicon of Terror
Alfonsín, Raúl
Algeria, torture in
Ali, Haj
Allan Memorial Institute
Allawi, Ali Abdul-Amir
Allbaugh, Joseph
Allende, Salvador
al-Qaeda
Alsogaray, María Julia
Aman Resorts
American Civil Liberties Union
American Enterprise Institute
The American Prospect (magazine)
American Society of Civil Engineers
Americas Watch
amnesia, as a side effect of electroshock
Amnesty International
Amoco (oil company)
AMR Corp.
ANC. See the African National Congress (ANC)
Anchel, David
Anderson, Jack
Andrews, Cassandra
Anglo American (Corp.)
anthrax, October ’01 scare
antiglobalization
sparked by disaster capitalism
See also globalization
Antillano, Andrés
Appeal Telecom (Korea)
A Question of Torture (McCoy)
Arafat, Yasser
Arar, Maher
Arbatov, Georgi
Arbenz Guzmán, Jacobo
Arendt, Marian
Argentina
aftermath of the 1976 coup in
its Chicago School revolution
Argentine Agrarian Leagues
Argentine Tribunal against Impunity
Armitage, Richard
Artigas, José Gervasio
ASEA Brown Bovai
AshBritt
Ashcroft, John
Ashcroft Group
Ashmore Investment Management
the Asia crisis
history of
lingering aftereffects of
the Asian Development Bank
Åslund, Anders
AT&T
Atlantic Monthly, The
Australia
authoritarian ideologies
Automated Targeting System (ATS)
Aven, Pyotr
Aznar, José María
Bacevich, Andrew
Bachelet, Michelle
Baker, James III
financial conflicts of interest and
Baker, Ken
Baker, Richard
Balcerowicz, Leszek
Baldwin, Maitland
Balkan War, Halliburton’s role in
Baltimore Sun
Bangkok Investment (Corp.)
Bank of America
Bank Boston
Bank Leumi (Israel)
Banzer, Hugo
Barak, Ehud
Bardón, Alvaro
Barron’s
Barshefsky, Charlene
Battles, Mike
Baudrillard, Jean
Bayer, Osvaldo
Bazzi, Mohamad
BearingPoint (consultants)
Bechtel (corporation)
Becker, Gary
Bedregal, Guillermo
Begg, Moazzam
Behavior Pattern Recognition (system)
Belafonte, Harry
Belka, Marek
Bell, Daniel
Bell Canada
Bello, Walden
Ben-Ami, Shlomo
Benn, Tony
Berezovsky, Boris
the “Berkeley Mafia” (Indonesia)
Berlin Wall, end of the
Bernstein, Jonas
betrayal, as a means to break solidarity
bin Talal, Alwaleed
Bioport (vaccine producer)
Birmingham, Michael
Bivens, Matt
Black, Conrad
Black Book of Communism (Courtois, et al.)
Blackwater
politics of
Blair, Tony
Blandford, Dave
Blitzer, Charles
Blitzer, Wolf
“blowback” See also societies, resistance to forced change in
Blue IQ (South Africa)
Blustein, Paul
Boal, Augusto
bodyguards, employment of
Boeing
Bolívar, Simón
Bolivia
economic devastation in
elections in
governmental collapse in
“shocks” applied to
Bolivian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA)
Bond, Patrick
Bono
Booth, Jerome
Booz Allen Hamilton
Bordaberry, Juan María
borders, security at
Borges, Jorge Luis
Bortnowska, Halina
Boston Globe
Bowart, Walter
Bowen, Stuart
Bowersox, Jon C.
boycotts, public use of
BP (British Petroleum)
“brainwashing”
Brazil
aftermath of the 1964 coup in
its Chicago School revolution
Brazil: Never Again (report)
Brecht, Bertolt
Bremer, L. Paul, III
arrives in Iraq
economic czar in Iraq
warns of free-trade blowback
Brian, Danielle
“Brick, the” (Chilean economic manual)
as official policy
Brinkley, Paul
British Gas
British Telecom
Browder, William
Brown, Michael
Brown & Root (Halliburton subsidiary)
Bruno, Michael
Brutus, Dennis
Budhoo, Davison
Bulgari
Bunjan, Khun
Burson-Marsteller (public relations firm)
Bush, George H. W.
administration of
Bush, George W.
administration of
advocates privatizations
expands powers of the executive branch
open use of torture by
“signing statements” used by
Bush, Jeb
Bush, Laura
Business Roundtable
Business Week
Caballero, Florencio
CACI International Inc.
Caldwell, Christopher
Camdessus, Michel
Cameron, Dr. Ewen
Canada
“free trade” election in
Canizaro, Joseph
capital controls
Capital Correctional Resources
capitalism
equated with freedom
as an ideological monopoly
ideology and
“mafia of”
“mixed” versus “pure”
opposition to unfettered versions of
See also disaster capitalism; economics; “neoliberalism”
Capitalism and Freedom (Friedman’s manifesto)
Carlyle Group
Carothers, Thomas
Carrefour
Cassidy, John
Castello Branco, Humberto
Castro, Fidel
Catholic Church, its role in Poland
Catholic University (Chile)
Cato Institute
Cavallo, Domingo
C.D. Howe Institute (Canada)
Center for Latin American Economic Studies (Chicago)
Center for Security Policy (U.S.)
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention
Central Intelligence Agency (U.S.). See CIA
Cerletti, Ugo
CH2M Hill Inc.
Chandrasekaran, Rajiv
Charity Hospital (New Orleans)
Charles Schwab
Chase Manhattan
Chávez, Hugo
Chechnya, as a diversionary war
Check Point (Israeli security company)
Cheney, Dick
advocates privatizations
becomes CEO of Halliburton
defense industry income and
financial conflicts of interest and
Cheney, Liz
Cheney, Lynne, defense industry income and
Chesapeake Innovation Center
Chevron
Chiarelli, Peter W.
Chicago Boys
See also Center for Latin American Economic Studies (Chicago); disaster capitalism, ideology and; University of Chicago
Chicago School (economic orthodoxy)
U.S. State Dept. promotion of
See also “Washington Consensus” (economic policies)
children, treatment of when parents are detained
Chile
dependent upon copper income
its Chicago School revolution
post-coup “shocks” applied to
returns to a restricted “democracy”
torture in
China
avoids Asian crisis
market economy for
market liberalization in
protests in
China’s New Order (Wang et al.)
Chinese merchants, riots against
ChoicePoint
Christopher, Warren
Chubais, Anatoly
CIA (Central Intelligence Agency, U.S.)
activities of against Allende
activities of against Sukarno
activities of supporting Southern Cone juntas
coups d’état initiated by
“extraordinary rendition” and
funding by for the International Commission of Jurists
interest of in the “psychic driving” experiments
links with the Ford Foundation by the
staff losses of to the private sector
torture and the
Citibank
Citicorp
Citigroup
Clark, Kathleen
Clarke, Richard
class (social), marked disparities in
class distinctions (social) See also disaster
reconstruction; wealth, marked disparities in
“cleansing.” See cultures, “cleansing” of
climate-change, denial of
Clinton, William J.
administration of
closure (of Israel’s borders), effects of
Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA, Iraq)
>
staffing problems of
Coca-Cola
Codelco
Cogeneration
Cohen, Richard
Cohen, Stephen
Collins, Anne
Collision Course (Norris)
colonialism, economic exploitation and
Columbia University
Commanding Heights (PBS documentary)
Committee for the Liberation of Iraq
Communism, as an ideology
