{"id":163,"date":"2012-11-12T19:52:00","date_gmt":"2012-11-12T23:52:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=163"},"modified":"2012-11-12T19:52:00","modified_gmt":"2012-11-12T23:52:00","slug":"hurricane-sandy-beware-of-americas-disaster-capitalists-naomi-klein-comment-is-free-the-guardian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/?p=163","title":{"rendered":"Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian<\/a><\/p>\n

The prize for shameless disaster capitalism, however, surely goes to rightwing economist Russell S Sobel, writing in a New York Times online forum. Sobel suggested that, in hard-hit areas, Federal Emergency Management Agency (Fema) should create “free-trade zones \u2013 in which all normal regulations, licensing and taxes [are] suspended”. This corporate free-for-all would, apparently, “better provide the goods and services victims need”.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Yes, that’s right: this catastrophe, very likely created by climate change \u2013 a crisis born of the colossal regulatory failure to prevent corporations from treating the atmosphere as their open sewer \u2013 is just one more opportunity for further deregulation. And the fact that this storm has demonstrated that poor and working-class people are far more vulnerable to the climate crisis shows that this is clearly the right moment to strip those people of what few labour protections they have left, as well as to privatise the meagre public services available to them. Most of all, when faced with an extraordinarily costly crisis born of corporate greed, hand out tax holidays to corporations.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

The flurry of attempts to use Sandy’s destructive power as a cash grab is just the latest chapter in the very long story I have called the The Shock Doctrine. And it is but the tiniest glimpse into the ways large corporations are seeking to reap enormous profits from climate chaos.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

One example: between 2008 and 2010, at least 261 patents were filed or issued relating to “climate-ready” crops \u2013 seeds supposedly able to withstand extreme conditions such as droughts and floods; of these patents close to 80% were controlled by just six agribusiness giants, including Monsanto and Syngenta. With history as our teacher, we know that small farmers will go into debt trying to buy these new miracle seeds, and that many will lose their land.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian The prize for shameless disaster capitalism, however, surely goes to rightwing economist Russell … Continue reading “Hurricane Sandy: beware of America’s disaster capitalists | Naomi Klein | Comment is free | The Guardian”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[19],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-163","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-contrarian-economics"],"post_mailing_queue_ids":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=163"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/163\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=163"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=163"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.cmhughesmd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=163"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}