January 20th, 2010By Naomi Klein In response to the wave of criticism, the IMF has just issued a statement saying that they will try to turn the $100-million loan to Haiti into a grant. This is unprecedented in my experience and shows that public pressure in moments of disaster can seriously subvert shock doctrine tactics. They are also now saying that they will not put conditions on the emergency loan—another popular victory, since this is not what they were saying last week. Of course people have to keep up the pressure to make sure Haiti's debts really are cancelled as the IMF is now predicting they will be. Something to hold them to! Here is the IMF's statement: "IMF Chief Calls for 'Marshall Plan' for Shattered Haiti" January 20, 2010 The head of the IMF has called for a major multilateral aid plan to rebuild the shattered Caribbean island of Haiti where the fight is still on to save lives after a devastating earthquake. "My belief is that Haiti—which has been incredibly hit by different things—the food and fuel prices crisis, then the hurricane, then the earthquake—needs something that is big. Not only a piecemeal approach, but something which is much bigger to deal...

20 January, 2010

January 20th, 2010By Naomi Klein Amy Goodman and the incredible team from Democracy Now! are in Haiti telling some very hard truths about the international response to the earthquake. Please take the time to watch today's enraging report on how the manufactured "security" threat is blocking desperately needed medical care. Amy also conducts an illuminating interview about Washington's obsession with privatizing Haiti's national industries, from flour to phones to cement. This weak, privatized state has made the current crisis much more severe. For a little more context on this issue, here is an interview I conducted with Jean Bertrand Aristide back in 2005. Aristide in Exile By Naomi Klein, The Nation, July 14, 2005 When United Nations troops kill residents of the Haitian slum Cité Soleil, friends and family often place photographs of exiled President Jean-Bertrand Aristide on their bodies. The photographs silently insist that there is a method to the madness raging in Port-au-Prince. Poor Haitians are being slaughtered not for being "violent," as we so often hear, but for being militant; for daring to demand the return of their elected president. It was only ten years ago that President Clinton celebrated Aristide's return to power as "the triumph of freedom over fear." So...

20 January, 2010

January 13th, 2010By Naomi Klein Readers of the The Shock Doctrine know that the Heritage Foundation has been one of the leading advocates of exploiting disasters to push through their unpopular pro-corporate policies. From this document, they're at it again, not even waiting one day to use the devastating earthquake in Haiti to push for their so-called reforms. The following quote was hastily yanked by the Heritage Foundation and replaced with a more diplomatic quote, but their first instinct is revealing: "In addition to providing immediate humanitarian assistance, the U.S. response to the tragic earthquake in Haiti earthquake offers opportunities to re-shape Haiti's long-dysfunctional government and economy as well as to improve the public image of the United States in the region." ...

13 January, 2010

January 11th, 2010By Naomi Klein and Avi Lewis The year began with a blast of sadness: news that Lhasa de Sela, one of Canada's finest musicians and a friend of ours, had died of breast cancer at 37. Lhasa's songs—performed in Spanish, French and English—have an utterly unique sound, like lullabies for a world in pain. But Lhasa also understood the power of music to transform, and she was quick to share her great gift with social movements that inspired her. "I know a song sung at the right moment can be such a very powerful thing," Lhasa wrote to us a few years ago. That was certainly our experience with Lhasa's music. For our 2004 documentary, The Take, she recorded an original version of "Yo Vengo a Ofrecer Mi Coracon," the Latin American classic made famous by Mercedes Sosa. Her voice became the soundtrack for the film's emotional climax, when thousands of workers and their supporters faced extreme police repression outside the occupied Brukman factory in downtown Buenos Aires. The only version of that remarkable recording is the one that appears in the film, so we wanted to share it—and the scene it infused—with all of you, in loving...

11 January, 2010

December 21st, 2009By Naomi Klein Contrary to countless reports, the debacle in Copenhagen was not everyone's fault. It did not happen because human beings are incapable of agreeing, or are inherently self-destructive. Nor was it all was China's fault, or the fault of the hapless UN.There's plenty of blame to go around, but there was one country that possessed unique power to change the game. It didn't use it. If Barack Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative and inspiring commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, all the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India had all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, but only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead of leading, Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him. Read on EnviroNation ...

21 December, 2009

December 17th, 2009By Naomi Klein It's the second to last day of the climate conference and I have the worst case of laryngitis of my life. I open my mouth and nothing comes out.It's frustrating because I was just at Hillary Clinton's press conference and desperately wanted to ask her a question — or six. She said that the U.S. would contribute its "share" to a $100-billion financing package for developing countries by 2020 — but only if all countries agreed to the terms of the climate deal that the U.S. has slammed on the table here, which include killing Kyoto, replacing legally binding measures with the fuzzy concept of "transparency," and nixing universal emissions targets in favor of vague "national plans" that are mashed together. Oh, and abandoning the whole concept (which the U.S. agreed to by singing the UN climate convention) that the rich countries that created the climate crisis have to take the lead in solving it. Read on EnviroNation ...

17 December, 2009

December 16th, 2009By Naomi Klein On the ninth day of the Copenhagen climate summit, Africa was sacrificed. The position of the G-77 negotiating bloc, including African states, had been clear: a 2 degree Celsius increase in average global temperatures translates into a 3-3.5 degree increase in Africa.That means, according to the Pan African Climate Justice Alliance, "an additional 55 million people could be at risk from hunger" and "water stress could affect between 350 and 600 million more people." Archbishop Desmond Tutu puts the stakes like this: "We are facing impending disaster on a monstrous scale...

16 December, 2009

December 16th, 2009By Naomi Klein with The UpTake On Wednesday in Copenhagen, I interviewed Lumumba Stanislaus Di-Aping, the chief negotiator for the G77, the largest developing country bloc represented at the climate summit in Copenhagen. Over the course of the negotiations, Ambassador Lumumba has gained a reputation for candor, putting the stakes for Africa in stark, emotional terms. Read on EnviroNation ...

16 December, 2009

December 13th, 2009By Naomi Klein On Saturday night, after a week of living off of conference center snack bars, a group of us were invited to a delicious home-cooked meal with a real live Danish family. After spending the evening gawking at their stylish furnishings, a few of us had a question: Why are Danes so good at design? "We're control freaks," our hostess replied instantly. "It comes from being a small country with not much power. We have to control what we can." When it comes to producing absurdly appealing light fixtures and shockingly comfortable desk chairs, that Danish form of displacement is clearly a very good thing. When it comes to hosting a world-changing summit, the Danish need for control is proving to be a serious problem. The Danes have invested a huge amount of money co-branding their capitol city (now "Hopenhagen") with a summit that will supposedly save the world. That would be fine if this summit actually were on track to save the world. But since it isn't, the Danes are frantically trying to redesign us. Take the weekend's protests. By the end, around 1,100 people had been arrested. That's just nuts. Saturday's march of roughly 100,000 people came at...

13 December, 2009

December 10th, 2009By Naomi Klein In the U.S. plenty of bloggers have pointed to the irony of Barack Obama collecting the Peace Prize while he launches a major escalation of the war in Afghanistan.Here in Copenhagen, the Nobel — which was awarded in part because of Obama's reengagement with the climate change negotiations -- carries a special set of ironies. The figure U.S. negotiators are floating for how much Washington will contribute to an international climate change fund is a paltry $1.4-billion.Meanwhile, the cost of the "surge" in Afghanistan is estimated at $30-40-billion. Yesterday I interviewed Kumi Naidoo, the new director of Greenpeace International, and he made this point forcefully: Read on EnviroNation ...

10 December, 2009