Naomi Klein: 'We can't lose this moment' By Kim Elliott

Naomi Klein

Kim Elliott: As you outline so well in your book and in various interviews in the U.S. media, the current financial crisis holds the possibility of being one of those moments when the shock doctrine can best be applied. Can you comment on both the Harper government's economic and fiscal statement introduced last week, and on the Opposition's response to that - that is, the formation of a coalition - in the context of the shock doctrine?

Naomi Klein: Yes, absolutely. What I think we are seeing is a clear example of the shock doctrine in the way the Harper government has used the economic crisis to push through a much more radical agenda than they won a mandate to do.

At the same time we are seeing an example of what I call in the book a "shock resistance," where this tactic has been so overused around the world and also in Canada that we are becoming more resistant to the tactic - we are on to them - and Harper is not getting away with it.

What I think is really amazing about this moment is whatever happens next - whether we end up with this coalition or not, we will have an extremely chastened Harper. So the attempted shock doctrine has failed. I think we can say that decisively.

Just to be clear, what I mean by the shock doctrine, as you know, is the use of crisis to push through unpopular pro-corporate policies. This bundling of a whole package of policies: denying the right of public sector workers to strike, the attack on public financing of political parties, with the economic program - that is what failed, and people were offended by the opportunism of it.
This is what so many of us were worried about during the election - the context of a Tory victory in an economic crisis, because we know that there is this pattern of using an economic crisis to push through policies that were nowhere during the campaign.

KE: This coalition gives us lots of opportunities, but it also poses some risks if it is successful. I'd like to ask you about that. In an interview you had on Democracy Now!, you said that part of the reason that Obama was appointing a host of neo-liberal economists was because there was a lack of "intellectual honesty" among progressives about the real legacy of the Clinton years. Does the Canadian left, in a Liberal-led coalition, risk losing our understanding of the neo-liberal legacy of the Liberals, who during those same Clinton years were ripping up Canada's welfare state, cutting social spending etc?

NK: I think it is really important to remember, and I've written about this in the book, and Linda McQuaig has written about it extensively, that it is the Liberals who actually implemented what I'm describing in Canada.

They were elected on an economic stimulus platform in 1993, with a huge mandate. The Tories were wiped out in those historic elections. And then they caved to pressure from Bay Street, from the corporate media and from the right-wing think tanks in the face of the debt crisis. They turned around and broke their election promises when it came to NAFTA, when it came to job creation, and the famous 1995 Paul Martin budget came down which did so much damage to unemployment insurances (which makes it particularly interesting that a key piece of the agreement for the coalition is about strengthening unemployment insurance). So we need to have long memories about the Liberals, because they have done exactly what Harper has just done, in terms of using an economic crisis for a neo-liberal about turn.

That said, what I find most exciting about what is going on right now - beyond just getting rid of Harper, which is exciting in and of itself - is that we have this opportunity to show what proportional representation (PR) would look like, because all of this talk that this is a coup is a joke.

What is being proposed by this coalition is much closer to representative democracy than what we have right now, which is a government that has [slightly more than] 35 per cent of the popular vote in a turnout that was historically low, of 59 per cent of Canadian voters, which means that even though the Tories won more seats they had fewer actual votes than in the last election.

I think it is really important to talk about democracy, about what it actually means in this period. In some ways I think it is even more important than talking about the policies, because our electoral system is broken. Because of the Tories' extraordinary opportunism and terrible calculation we now have an opportunity to see a better version of democracy and see more people represented in government.

To me the best case scenario that could come out of this is, one, you get the coalition, and, two, the NDP uses this moment to really launch a national discussion about why we need PR and that that becomes one of the things that comes out of this crisis.

Now, they don't have the mandate for that right now, but we could come out of this with a national referendum on proportional representation. People might actually like it, which would be really, really exciting.

KE: That is a very exciting possibility, and I wanted to ask you, if this coalition is successful, what are the two or three key issues that the NDP should focus on, the kinds of issues that were not covered in the agreement?

NK: They've put in writing what they've agreed to. I think it is going to maybe be up to the NDP to make sure that the EI improvements are protected.

KE: I'm thinking of those issues that were not in the agreement like PR, or like withdrawal from Afghanistan - those issues that were not nailed down in the agreement.

NK: Those issues weren't nailed down because there isn't agreement on them, and that I think it is not really about whether the NDP holds the line on these issues, but about how the NDP uses this platform. It is a historic opportunity, I think, to be very bold, not just because of what is happening in this country, but because of what is happening globally.

Another important role for the NDP, beyond putting proportional representation on the agenda, withdrawal from Afghanistan, is also the terms of the bailout. The bailout for the auto industry is part of their agreement, but we don't know what the terms of that agreement are going to be, and that is going to be really important in terms of negotiating a progressive automobile industry bailout - a green auto industry bailout, if such a thing is possible. So that is a very important role that the NDP could play.

I think the best analogy, in terms of the kinds of concerns you are raising in regards to the Liberals and neo-liberalism, of being the party that continued and deepened Mulroney's neo-liberal economic program, is to look at Gordon Brown. He was finance minister for Tony Blair, really the face of neo-liberalism in Britain. He is now overseeing what many are calling the death of New Labour, and the return to Keynesian economics in Britain. That is because he is fighting for his political life. That is because he was going down, until he started talking this way. That is really what is at stake for the Liberals, I think.

This is also why I think the issue of political financing for political parties is so key. The reason there is a little more latitude in Canada on these issues is because our political process is not massively owned by corporations as it is in the United States.

The way in which public financing for political parties has been presented in the press is "oh the politicians, they just got mad when they went after their money," right? This is another key point that I think is somewhat related to the issue of proportional representation. We need to be talking about our political process here, and the issue of public financing for political parties in elections is key to protecting and deepening democracy in Canada, and for keeping it out of corporate control. It is not for nothing that the Tories are attacking that. They see attacking public financing of political parties as a way to entrench their power.

KE: Should this coalition become government, what should we as progressive movements be doing in terms of using this as an opportunity to promote these kinds of progressive agendas, to support the NDP in a predominantly Liberal caucus?

NK: I think it is PR, I really think that is the way in. By pushing PR then it is not just about this one crisis. It is about leveraging this situation to have a more democratic system. It means that if the NDP does deeply disappoint us in this moment we could still end up with a better political system.

KE: Should the coalition happen what do you see as the long-term fall-out in terms of western voters in Canada?

NK: I really think that we need to fight back this strategy. We know what the talking points are from the right and from the West, and it is about playing up this idea of making a coalition with the Bloc, "with the separatists."

What to me is so extraordinary is the temper tantrum being thrown in Alberta right now at the prospect of having to be ruled by a majority - by a coalition of parties representing the majority of the people in this country. I really do think it is worth asking who the real separatists are, because of course the undercurrent of everything they are saying is that they will take our oil. So who are the real separatists?

KE: Do you agree then that we should be out there supporting the coalition? Attending rallies, mobilizing letter-writing campaigns?

NK: Absolutely. Listen, we've been given a second chance, after these elections. What is exciting about it is that a lot of people did get involved in the election to try to beat the Tories. Maybe it started a little bit too late. We were surprised a bit by how quickly the election happened, but you saw a lot of people getting involved in things like voteforenviroment.ca and the Department of Culture.

That was very much the spirit of it, it was anything but the Tories and it was kind of building a PR system without the cooperation of the political parties that got a lot of people excited during this election. It was about just doing an end-run around the political parties who were not cooperating to try to keep out the Tories.

So, what is exciting about this political moment, and how people can get involved, is that this is building on that. The political parties caught up with the grassroots movement that was happening anyway with those initiatives like voteforenvironment.ca, Department of Culture, and people like Murray Dobbin who have been making these arguments pretty steadily outside of the political parties. Now it is happening, and it is happening thanks to Stephen Harper and his extraordinary arrogance and over-reaching. We can't lose this moment.

I just want to emphasize this point: If even through smart tactics, Harper pulls this off, if he prorogues Parliament; if the Governor General lets him get away with it; if the Liberals lose their nerve over Xmas, then the Harper we will have in January will be a deeply chastened Harper.

What everybody agrees with is that he made a massive error, that he massively overreached, and his own party, his own base agrees with that. Worst case scenario we dodged a bullet here. Best case scenario, we leverage his overreach, his attempt to use a crisis to push through his ideological pro-corporate agenda to have a deeper democracy in our country, and to prevent forevermore a situation where a party with 35 per cent of the vote is government.

Interview with Naomi Klein, rabble.ca, December 3, 2008

The Fearful Lives in a Land of the Free by Robert Fisk

I was given the chance to talk to 600 Muslim Canadians a few days ago. The dinner was in an Ottawa banqueting room and the guests also included the imam of the Ottawa mosque, the Ottawa chief of police and sundry uniformed Canadian army officers.

The imam sat between me and the Canadian capital’s top cop - a genuinely decent guy who wanted Muslim Canadians to regard him as a friend - and we were even able to joke about the reality of those “random checks” which Muslims of Middle Eastern origin and a certain R Fisk seem to receive at North American airports. All well and good, then, until I got up to speak.

I warned the audience they might not like all they heard from me. And sure enough, when I told the audience that they were perfectly at liberty to condemn Israel and America - indeed, that they should condemn both when they abuse human rights, occupy other people’s countries and shoot innocent civilians - but that I wanted to know why I so rarely heard them condemn the vicious police states in the Middle East and other areas of south-west Asia from which they originally came, I was greeted with silence. A smattering of Muslim diplomats sat like statues, thus identifying the cruelty of their regimes. The only immediate applause came when I remarked that the moment Western soldiers started shooting at Muslims in Muslim lands, it was time for the soldiers to withdraw.

Two interesting phenomena emerged from this remark. The first was that, when I finished, both the police chief and the Canadian army officers joined the applause. Canada’s hopeless military involvement in Afghanistan is a subject of considerable controversy within the Canadian military. When the politicians have had their say, I’ve discovered, soldiers usually let us know their views.

Much more revealing, however, was the long car journey I took next day across the frozen tundra of Canada during which two Muslim Canadian men - yes, yes, they had beards - explained to me just why their community was so silent about the iniquities perpetrated by their local dictatorships back home. I had suggested that they were rather too beholden to those regimes - for funding and political support. They agreed - up to a point.

“Mr Robert, you have to understand something,” the driver suddenly said. “They have their ‘mukhabarat’ agents here in Canada. Whenever there is even a dispute between families, anyone who’s angry can report back that his antagonist is anti-regime. We have to remember that we have families still in our Arab countries. They can be arrested. Or we can be arrested when we go back to visit them.”

Of course. Only a Westerner - only someone who automatically assumes that anyone with a Canadian passport is safe - could have failed to spot the flaw in the country’s brave multiethnic society: not that Canada’s vast communities from every part of the world live in the land of the free - which they do - but that their freedom is frighteningly circumscribed by the ruthlessness and lack of freedom in the countries from which they came.
And so I began to learn what it is like to be an Arab Canadian. It takes only a local argument to have an email winging its way back to Tripoli or Cairo or Damascus or the Gulf, informing the local despots that their dual citizen - Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman or whatever - is a potential subversive and, ergo, a terrorist. And, so great is the co-operation between our beloved Western intelligence agencies and the torturers of these repulsive dictatorships that this “intelligence” is shared.

So only days after the original message has gone off to the Arab world, the “mukhabarat” privately tell the Canadian intelligence service - a truly silly institution called CSIS - that Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman is a “terrorist”. At which point, Mohamed or Hassan or Abdulrahman come under observation from CSIS as potentially dangerous terrorists in Canada.
At which point I realised exactly why my remarks in the Ottawa banqueting hall were greeted with a frozen silence. It isn’t long ago, for example, that Maher Arar, who lives in Canada, was picked up by the FBI’s goons while in transit at JFK airport and “renditioned” to an underground prison and torture in Syria, courtesy of information provided by CSIS and the Royal Canadian Mounted Police.

The Canadian government subsequently awarded Arar $10m for this outrageous experience. But who wants to speak out against one’s country of origin if it’s going to end in the company of a well-trained torturer?
Just as Tariq Ali revealed the darkness behind the Bhutto legend in the London Review of Books last year, so my favourite lawyer, Gareth Peirce - she of In the Name of the Father fame - has now shone her crimson torch upon the British version of these iniquitous goings on.

In the same publication, she has given the most detailed account so far of the fraudulent British promises given to Arabs who chose to return to their savage homelands - rather than languish under a form of house arrest in the UK - that they would be neither tortured nor imprisoned after they went home.

When Benaissa Taleb and Rida Dendani were packed off back to Algeria, for instance, a British diplomat had promised that they would be detained for only a few hours. But they were both interrogated and beaten for 12 days in Algiers before being sentenced to years in prison. When Dendani appealed desperately to the British Special Immigration Appeals Commission, the SIAC didn’t even bother to reply. And there was no reason why they should.

As Peirce has now revealed from court papers, private memoranda between the Home Office and Anthony Blair (I am truly sorry that I must mention this wretched man’s name again), a caution from civil servants about the probable torture to which deported Egyptians might be subjected if sent to Cairo, was greeted by our former prime minister with the words: “Get them back.” In reference to the Home Office’s concern that Egyptian assurances could not be trusted, Blair wrote: “This is a bit much. Why do we need all these things?”

Am I the only one to react to the preachy, hypocritical sermon by this detestable man at Westminster Cathedral on Thursday with something more than disgust? Because it is his callous, immoral reaction to that deportation case - and the response of countless political leaders like him - towards Muslims in Europe and North America that led to that cold, hollow, frightening silence in the Ottawa banqueting hall. If I had been among the audience, I now realise, I would have remained silent too.

Published on Saturday, April 5, 2008 by The Independent/UK

Robert Fisk’s new book The Age of the Warrior: Selected Writings, a selection of his Saturday columns in The Independent is out now.

Police and Tasers: Hooked on Shock by Naomi Klein

Naomi Klein

The past couple of weeks have been rocky on the stock market, but one company that hasn’t been suffering too much is Taser International. At the end of January, its stock jumped by an impressive 8 per cent, and it’s even higher today.

Matthew McKay, a stock analyst at Jeffries & Co. in San Francisco, cites a simple cause: news that the Toronto Police Services Board plans to buy 3,000 new Taser electroshock weapons, at a cost of $8.6 million for gear and training. If the deal goes ahead, tasers would become standard issue weaponry for all of Toronto’s frontline officers, right next to their handcuffs and batons.


On Wednesday night, I participated in a public forum about the prospect of a fully taser-armed police force, organized by the Toronto Police Accountability Coalition. One speaker, who had a history of psychiatric illness, told the room: “We’re worried because we’re the people who are going to get shocked.”


It’s a concern grounded in experience. According to Toronto Police Chief Bill Blair’s own analysis, in 2006, city cops deployed the devices in 156 incidents. In all but nine, the subject appeared “to have a mental disorder” or was in some sort of “crisis.”


Several speakers at the forum pointed out that $8.6 million would be better spent keeping people out of crisis - by opening more beds and providing better mental health and addiction services. Instead, four homeless shelters were closed last year, at a loss of 258 beds.


But the most troubling remark of the evening was this: “Why is this happening now?” The timing is indeed baffling. It was only three months ago that video of the death of Robert Dziekanski at the Vancouver International Airport caused an international furor.



The tragedy exposed the most prevalent misconception about tasers: that they are used primarily as an alternative to guns. As former Toronto mayor John Sewell told me, “the taser is not the thing that replaces the gun, it’s what replaces all the other things that police might do other than use a gun, like talk to you.”


That certainly appears to have been the case with Mr. Dziekanski. When the RCMP approached him, they made no attempt to calm the unarmed Polish man, or to discover the source of his extreme agitation. Within 25 seconds, he was getting zapped.


Mr. Dziekanski’s death also put a spotlight on the other post-taser deaths, the ones not caught on film. According to Amnesty International, 310 people in North America have died after being shocked with a taser since 2001.


Were these deaths caused by the device or by something else? Taser’s aggressive lawyers make it tough to know. The company has been hit with roughly a hundred wrongful death and injury lawsuits and claims it hasn’t lost one yet. But in August, Bloomberg News reported on “several mysterious dismissals” - instances where the plaintiffs asked for the cases to be thrown out.



Though Taser denies paying off all its accusers, it admits to paying in some, “where the settlement economics … were significantly less than the cost of litigation.”


Taser has consistently claimed that something else is causing the deaths. The company points to a report saying that that death by electrocution happens within seconds. Yet in many cases, subjects have died minutes, even days, after being shocked.


A recent study may explain the discrepancy. Trauma researchers at Chicago’s Cook County Hospital conducted an experiment on 11 pigs, zapping each for 40 seconds; then zapping them again 10 or 15 seconds later. (This mimics how tasers are actually used, since Amnesty reports that those who have died after being Tasered were frequently “subjected to multiple or prolonged shocks.”)



The study found that all the pigs exhibited heart problems after the shocks and two of them died of cardiac arrest, one three minutes later.


Taser CEO Rick Smith has brushed off the study, saying human research is more relevant. However, according to Bob Walker, one of the lead researchers, it shows “that the effect of the taser shot can last beyond the time when it’s being delivered.”


So back to that question: Why now? In addition to the troubling new scientific evidence and the disconcerting lawsuits, there are several public investigations in Canada that are still ongoing. In addition to those sparked by the Dziekanski death, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Nova Scotia are all conducting taser reviews.


Surely it would be wise for Toronto’s police chief to wait for those findings before ordering a seven-fold taser increase. But something more powerful than reason appears to be at play here, and I believe it has to do with the seductive promise of no-touch policing.


No other method of controlling unruly suspects offers police the same kind of all-encompassing, instant effect. Talking, calming, negotiating are all messier and take time. Other physical techniques put officers’ own bodies at risk.


Then there is the taser. The company boasts that its technology, which allows electrified darts to be fired from more than 10 meters away, “temporarily overrides the command and control systems of the body.”



At the push of a button, even the strongest, angriest subject drops to the floor. In a way, firing a taser is the maximum power one person can exert over another. As an Ottawa Police officer reportedly said after tasering protesters at the ministry of immigration back in 2003: “Less mess, more fun.”


Few would argue with an officer’s right to use an electroshock weapon when lives are in danger and the only alternative is a gun. Many Toronto police officers, particularly those on the Emergency Task Force, clearly use them with restraint.


Yet there is also plenty of evidence that some officers get hooked on shock. In Edmonton, in 2001, reports of taserings averaged less than once a week. Three years later, they were coming in daily. In another part of the country, a mother in Dartmouth, Nova Scotia called police when she and her 17-year-old daughter were having an argument. Three officers showed up and tasered the teen in her own bed. In a recent court ruling, the judge called these actions “very disturbing and disconcerting.”


It may well be possible to prevent shock-happy policing with tighter controls. Yet, despite repeated calls for stricter regulations for police, Taser International is racing to get its devices in the hands of civilians, marketing the product as not just safe but fun. In the United States the company has been aggressively pushing its line of C2 “personal protectors” - available in pink, leopard print, and in holsters with built-in MP3 players. (The weapon is nicknamed the “iTaser.”) Tupperware-style taser parties are springing up in the suburbs of Arizona.


Taser International is a company whose executives present themselves as serious experts in public safety. Yet it has launched this foray into fashion at the very moment when the safety of its devices is being questioned on multiple fronts. Valentine’s Day is coming and Taser’s website is busily hawking the C2 in flaming red. “Love her? Protect her,” goes the slogan.


This is what corporations do: whatever they can get away with to sell more product. From Taser International, we should expect nothing less.


From our police we have a right to expect much more.



Published on Monday, February 11, 2008 by CommonDreams.org


Naomi Klein is the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. http://www.naomiklein.org/

‘Why Talk When You Can Shock,’ says Taser Opponent

Naomi Klein

TORONTO — Tasers are not a replacement for guns; they’re a replacement for talking, said author Naomi Klein at a town-hall meeting last night.

“If it happened in a cell, we would call it torture and if it happens on the street we should not be afraid to call it torture,” said Klein, who is the author of The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism.

The discussion on the police use of shock and stun guns was held at the University of Toronto in response to Toronto police Chief Bill Blair’s request that 3,000 officers be armed with electroshock guns.

When RCMP officers used a Taser on Polish immigrant Robert Dziekanski in Vancouver International Airport last October, they did so within 25 seconds of their arrival on the scene, Klein said. Dziekanski died shortly after.

“Why talk when you can shock?” she said. “Tasers are not a replacement for guns. They’re a replacement for everything else …they’re a replacement for talking; for negotiating.”

As many as 20 people in Canada and 290 in the United States have died after being shocked by a Taser, said the chair of Toronto’s Amnesty International chapter, Andy Buxton, who also sat on the panel.

Taser International has said the weapon it manufactures is safe.


But during clinical trials, people who are zapped are in a calm, healthy state.


“That’s not how it is in real life,” Buxton said.


Of the 310 people in North American who died after being shocked with a Taser, people were often intoxicated or high on some kind of drug, such as cocaine.

The majority had been in an altercation with police, had had force used on them and many were tied up in some way.

“Something in that whole witches’ brew all together (is unsafe) and we don’t know what,” Buxton said.

“And until all the facts are on the table, (Amnesty International) is asking police in Canada and the United States to put a moratorium on the use of Tasers until we know whether or not they’re safe,” he said.

Buxton also cited statistics that show officers can become addicted to using Tasers. He used the example of the Edmonton police force, where Taser use increased from an average of once a week to once a day.

Published on Thursday, February 7, 2008 by The Toronto Star

From http://www.commondreams.org/