An eye-opening interview on the corporate sponsored manipulations of "disaster capitalism."
[excerpt] "Klein: Yeah, yeah—we definitely should link to this one. The heading on the document is. ... Well, first of all, the people who attended the meeting were from a variety of right-wing think tanks, as well as the Republican Study Group—highly placed Republican congresspeople. And they came up with 32 free-market solutions for Hurricane Katrina. And it was everything from give parents school vouchers instead of rebuilding the public schools; mixed-use housing instead of repairing the public housing; drill in ANWR [the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge] ...; build more oil refineries. I mean, it was just the wish list!
And so what you see there is just, you know, the readiness of the right—aided by these think tanks, funded by multinational corporations and the richest families in the United States—to seize on a crisis that they themselves created with their ideology to push for more of the same. I mean, Katrina was a catastrophe, the flooding of New Orleans was a catastrophe created by heavy weather linked to global warming, because the increase in category 5 hurricanes is directly linked to warming ocean temperatures, and weak infrastructure, which is linked to the systematic neglect of the public sphere as a result of the campaign to destroy the New Deal.
And what is their solution? It’s more fossil fuels ... and destroying the public infrastructure altogether. And the fact is much of this has happened. The public housing in New Orleans is being destroyed. The hospitals—the public hospital in New Orleans is still not open, Charity Hospital. The school system ... has been handed over to charter schools. ..." Read more
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