Disaster Capitalism

Naomi Klein wiritng in The Nation nails a disturbing modern phenomenon that she labels "Disaster Capitalism."

"Few ideologues can resist the allure of a blank slate--that was colonialism's seductive promise: 'discovering' wide-open new lands where utopia seemed possible. But colonialism is dead, or so we are told; there are no new places to discover, no terra nullius (there never was), no more blank pages on which, as Mao once said, 'the newest and most beautiful words can be written.' There is, however, plenty of destruction--countries smashed to rubble, whether by so-called Acts of God or by Acts of Bush (on orders from God)."

"We used to have vulgar colonialism," says Shalmali Guttal, a Bangalore-based researcher with Focus on the Global South. "Now we have sophisticated colonialism, and they call it 'reconstruction.'"