From Chapter 18 of The Shock Doctrine, another scary thought/revelation:
On August 5, 2004, the White House created the Office of the Coordinator for Reconstruction and Stabilization, headed by former US Ambassador to Ukraine Carlos Pascual. Its mandate is to draw up elaborate “post-conflict” plans for up to twenty-five countries that are not, as of yet, in conflict.
…Fittingly, a government devoted to perpetual pre-emptive deconstruction now has a standing office of perpetual pre-emptive reconstruction.
Gone are the days of waiting for wars to break out and then drawing up ad hoc plans to pick up the pieces. In close cooperation with the National Intelligence Council, Pascual’s office keeps “high risk” countries on a “watch list” and assembles rapid-response teams ready to engage in prewar planning and to “mobilize and deploy quickly” after a conflict has gone down. The teams are made up of private companies, nongovernmental organizations and members of think tanks–some, Pascual told an audience at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in October, will have “pre-completed” contracts to rebuild countries that are not yet broken. Doing this paperwork in advance could “cut off three to six months in your response time.”
The Rise of Disaster Capitalism
Almost makes it bizarro-understandable (understandable if you follow the line of reasoning/motivation of free market fundamentalists) that the “response” from the government is so pathetic. This makes it easier to “slip in” somebody “ready and qualified” to fill the recovery/reconstruction gap, someone who also, as a matter of fact, works for a subcontracted private firm who has been given the contract as a back room deal from the boys in the halls of government, and fulfills the mandate of the free market fundies (including and often led and staffed by “neocons”) . In short, we fail, showing how inefficient government is (especially those agencies being gutted and staffed as perks to wholly unqualified people who do not even work in areas that would make them qualified), which then makes it more palatable to hand the “rescue” or “reform” or “rebuild” over to “more efficient” , “for profit” companies, who are also adept at white-washing (usually by ignoring) the impact of their “rescue/remake” on the invisible poor.
This is the kind of story that can do nothing but “radicalize” us (and we are seen as radical for the sole reason that we call into question the practices of entities (ie principalities and powers, quite literally) who “manufacture” our consent by use of media propaganda, fueled by “think tanks” staffed not by people who understand the field, but by linguists and marketers who study how to persuade in the mass market.
