Shocking new book!

Naomi Klein, a noted Canadian journalist, has written a book that will shock and awe you and make you mad as hell. But it will also empower you because you'll understand what the heck is going on instead of feeling bamboozled or at the mercy of US decision makers who spend our hard earned tax dollars only to set up their multinational corporate friends to profit from disasters, attacks and news that stuns us.

The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism is the meticulously researched story of how those in power have used it to take advantage of the most vulnerable among us after a disaster of any kind (including war), giving huge rebuilding contracts to their multinational corporate friends while using tax dollars, well-intended volunteers and even the American military to assist in this process.

Essentially it describes creating a socialist nation with the multinational corporations benefiting from and sustained by government decisions and money that strives to privatize *everything* without any regulation or oversight.

Like Blackwater, one of the private armies (run by a right wing Christian extremist) hired by the Bush administration to fight on behalf of the US, which has been free to do as it wishes without any accountability, even when it is accused of killing innocent civilians in Iraq.

Did you know that the horrific torture of Iraqi citizens in Abu Ghriab (almost none of whom had anything to do with terrorists, but who were arrested off the street in hopes of torturing information out of them) was instigated by a private company? Interestingly, only soldiers were photographed with the abused prisoners and held responsible while little or no mention was made of the private company involved.

A nation that instilled this Milton Friedman free-for-all economic template, Chile, saw its economy implode from greed, malfeasance and misfeasance since everyone was out for himself without any regard to the nation or the welfare of its people. The US supported its abusive anti-democracy leader, Augusto Pinochet, called a tyrant by even conservative The Economist magazine.

Please do not take my word for any of this. Read the book and be enlightened so you need not feel victimized again when folks like Bush and Cheney tell you what is happening when you see for your own eyes what they say is not true. Like when Louisiana was still neck deep in water months after the levees broke (money to fix the levees had been diverted to Iraq) while we were told by "the authorities" that progress was being made.

Suddenly, unhappily, after reading "The Shock Doctrine," we can see that we're really not crazy. That we really are seeing the truth of this outright treasonous corruption, no matter what "authorities" tell us to deny that truth. Klein explains this so clearly with so many examples, we'll actually be able to predict what "they" will do next when they attempt to manipulate us, usurp our democratic power and misuse our tax dollars.

The idea is to scare you so you'll give up any decision-making powers you might have to those "in charge;" in fact, going on to manipulate you to actively support their decisions, especially when they ask for more tax money.

They then go on to cavalierly pick the pockets of us average folks while lining the pockets of the multinationals and those in charge.

In case you haven't heard the latest attempt to rewrite history, Karl Rove - the architect of the Republican mess we're in - is now writing a book insisting that Congress made the mistake of voting us into Iraq, not the Bush administration. Sort of like those who deny the holocaust, he's trying to deny his role, as well as that of President Bush and Vice President Cheney in pushing us into the bloodletting quagmire.