Much to Chile's chagrin, Professor Friedman was incredibly successful at the modern raping and pillaging of Chile's wealth for his corporate masters. His acclaim in Western economic circles, academia and political governance is almost immediate. Here, Ms. Klein is exceptional at describing the pain and suffering endured by the Chileans during the brutal regime of General Pinochet, the West's puppet leader who kowtowed to Washington, not Santiago. She also showed how he was not the first choice, dispelling the oft-misused concept that all Latin Americans are somehow not patriotic and prefer to sell their souls to the devil, in this case Western powers most often the US, rather than defend their country, their homeland and their independence. As can be amply shown by the recent worldwide economic crisis which has destroyed the US economy as well as many others, American and Western banksters have no problem selling out their very own countries in the name of greed. They have many peers across the globe who think nothing of personal gain at national expense, including a few in power and in the military in Latin America.
Her inclusion of the disasters created as a result of the Shock Doctrine in Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Bolivia and across Latin America created a very comprehensive, though incomplete list of the West's intervention, which can easily be called: America's foreign policy. Countries like Haiti, the Dominican Republic, and others, have their stories as well.
Today, Latin America is still reeling from the effects of the latest US-imposed Shock Doctrine, the global economic meltdown, which has hit the world like an economic tsunami of horrific social scale. Though little noticed in Western media, but properly signaled in Naomi's book written before the current crisis, is the new coalition of continental mercados, Venezuela, Brazil, Argentina and Chile. This contemporary Southern Cone is driving these countries past the American IEDs (improvised economic debacles) and on to more prosperous pastures beyond. Ms. Klein's description of this phenomenon is well done. As she states, The Bolivarian Alternative for the Americas (ALBA) is the answer to the American de facto foreign policy of continued usurpation and enslavement enforced by the US in the latter half of the 20th Century.
Europe - Eastern Bloc Becomes Eastern Bust
Throughout the 70s and 80s the US foreign policy use of the Shock Doctrine destroyed country after country in Latin America. Though the policy of world shock has always been at the fore of the ideals surrounding the Shock Doctrine, the fact that the Soviet Union and its satellite allies of the Eastern Bloc did not participate in the Bretton Woods Agreement, and were therefore ineligible for IMF and WB aid, prevented the US and its shock troops from spreading their doctrine to those countries. This, however, dramatically changed in the early 1980s. The Polish Union, Solidarity, and its leader, Lech Walesa, brought that country to center stage and provided Professor Friedman and his horde of economic mercenaries to the very steppes of the Soviet Union, well almost.
I had a chance to visit Warsaw, Poland, in December,1978,
and though the trip was merely six days, it was one of the most memorable I've ever taken. Warsaw (Polish for "Man/Woman" where "Wars" = "Man" and "Sawa" = "Woman") is a beautiful European city steeped in history, lore and culture. One tip to the wise, NEVER visit Warsaw, Poland, in December, unless your idea of fun is slipping and sliding around town and falling on your bum everywhere you go.
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