How Naomi Klein's "Shock Doctrine" Explains The Taser Death of a Polish Man

By Cliff Schecter, Brave New Films
Posted on November 22, 2007, Printed on November 26, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://bravenewfilms.org/68660/

This post, written by Cliff Schecter, originally appeared on Cliff Schecter's Brave New Films Blog

Her L.A. Times piece which is a must read. But before I give you a taste, here is our very own Robert Greenwald on her important contribution to our current policy debate:

Naomi klein has written a brilliant book that explains and reveals the toll that disaster capitalism is taking all over the world.

Her op ed in the LA Times and this video bring the story to a very human level. The Shock Doctrine connects the dots in policy to allow us to understand how the system works and is important as we begin to look past Bush hatred to changing the system itself.

Much of the outrage sparked by the video, which was made by another passenger at the airport, has focused on the controversial use of Tasers, already implicated in 17 deaths in Canada and many more in the United States.

But what happened in Vancouver was about more than a weapon. It was also about an increasingly brutal side of the global economy -- about the reality that many victims of various forms of economic "shock therapy" face at our borders.

Rapid economic transformations like Poland's have created enormous wealth -- in new investment opportunities; currency trading; in leaner, meaner companies able to comb the globe for the cheapest location to manufacture. But from Mexico to China to Poland, they also have created tens of millions of discarded people, the people who lose their jobs when factories close or lose their land when export zones open.

Understandably, many of these people often choose to move: from countryside to city, from country to country. As Dziekanski appeared to be doing, they go in search of that elusive "normal."

But there isn't enough normal to go around, or so we are told. And so, as migrants move, they are often met with other shocks. A treacherous electrified fence on Spain's southern border, or a Taser gun on the U.S.-Mexican border. Canada, which used to be known around the world for its openness to refugees, is militarizing its borders, with lines between immigrant and terrorist blurring fast.

Dziekanski's inhuman treatment at the hands of the Canadian police must be seen in this context. The police were called when Dziekanski, lost and disoriented, began shouting in Polish, at one point throwing a chair. Faced with a foreigner like Dziekanski, who spoke no English, why talk when you can shock? It strikes me that the same brutal, short-cut logic guided Poland's economic transition to capitalism: Why take the gradual route, which required debate and consent, when "shock therapy" promised an instant, if painful, cure?

Klein really has put together one of the most dangerous trends gripping our world and our political culture (not to mention that of neo-conservatives abroad such as Tony Blair).

Now watch the video!

Cliff Schecter blogs at Brave New Films.

© 2009 Brave New Films All rights reserved.
View this story online at: http://www.alternet.org/bloggers/http://bravenewfilms.org/68660/