By TLB Staff Writer: Zine Larbaoui
The “Shock Doctrine” is a policy of dismantling public assets and drastic curtailment of freedoms applied after a severe economic, environmental or political crisis, a terrorist attack or war; false flags are usually engineered to draw outrage and provide remedy.
Naomi Klein wrote the book, “Shock Doctrine,” inspired by the brainwashing and sensory deprivation techniques used by the CIA to destroy the memory of the subject, break his resilience and achieve a “blank page” on which to write a new personality.
At the population level, the objective is to obtain a “clean slate” from the past by reducing to zero the country’s public heritage, to annihilate its social and economic structures and build a new society mirrored on the ruling class utopian will. Deprived of their sense of orientation, literally in shock, populations affected by this treatment are robbed of their public assets (education, health, pensions) and freedoms by the oligarchy and its elites without even being able or willing to defend themselves.
Historical examples abound: Chileans during the dictatorship of Pinochet or Argentina under Videla, the Russians victims of “shock therapy ” under Boris Yeltsin , Iraqi victims of U.S. intensive bombing campaign in March 2003, dubbed Shock and Awe, the people of Louisiana, victims of Hurricane Katrina and the deliberate lack of emergency response, the Americans, victims of the September 11 scam and its draconian post trauma excesses, North, South Africans, Chinese or Polish victims of the neo-liberal “revolutions” … the list goes on of all those who served as guinea pigs in this insane doctrine born in the Mac Gill University’s laboratory in Montreal. It strangely spared Western Europe … until the subprime crisis of 2007-2008.
Welcome to Greece, the latest European experiment in “disaster capitalism” where the limits of human endurance are tested: an (official) unemployment rate of 28%, a third of the population living below the poverty line, more than a third without health insurance, utilities rolled back by draconian austerity cures, public assets (archaeological sites, islands, forests, airports, gas company or electricity , etc ) sold off for a pittance to private companies…and an exhausted population, incapable of defending itself .
The reason for this capitulation? Intense trauma caused by the crisis and ensuing violence imposed on the Greeks by the banking oligarchy, undermining any attempt of resistance to the systematic destruction of the public welfare: “Wait for a major crisis, then, while citizens are still under shock, sell the state piece by piece to private interests before arranging in haste. Punishing “reforms” is a good summary of what happened to the Greeks. This true financial coup required several stages of preparation. Here is the story of a (Greek) tragedy in 5 acts .
Act 1: create the conditions for a credit crisis (2000-2007)
In the early 2000s , the U.S. engaged itself in limitless credit madness. Borrowers, including insolvent ones, increasingly contract risky mortgages formulas and often at variable rates (teaser rates or subprime). In the early years, the rates are low and borrowers can repay easily but gradually, as rates go up, an increasing number of people can not repay their home loan and are forced to sell their property, thereby depressing market prices, the first stage of the crisis .
These “toxic” loans (highest risk of defaulting) are compiled with other financial products, artificially receiving the highest rating (AAA) from “reputable” credit rating agencies, then traded on the world stock exchanges. The U.S. investment bank Goldman Sachs is one of the pioneers in the creation of these “subprimes.”
The party is over in spring 2008: household borrowers can not repay their loans because of rising interest rates, the housing debt bubble bursts and the system seizes. The financial system is contaminated with these rotten securities and contagion spreads throughout the industry; their value collapses, investors lose confidence and interbank lending is quickly frozen.
The benefit is threefold for the banking oligarchy, having taken advantage of easy credit in the first phase; it produces the conditions of an engineered crisis that will force states (i.e. public money) to bail them out in the second phase and it will multiply profits by placing entire countries under its control through widening sovereign debt and financing with inflated interest rates in the third phase.
2nd act: trigger a debt crisis (Fall 2008)
The trigger for the so-called “subprime” crisis is well known . The Bush administration nationalized AIG and Bank of America bought Merrill Lynch … but refuses to save the investment bank Lehman Brothers who files for bankruptcy on Sept. 15, causing then a significant drop in all global exchanges. With this decision, Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson hits three targets with one stone: he sacrifices a direct competitor of Goldman Sachs – the bank he chaired between 1998 and 2006 and did continue to lead behind the scenes – and it produces the conditions of a providential crisis in finance while robbing under threat of collapse and martial law, public money for the sole benefit of private banks, politically called “too big to fail” through the “Paulson plan”.
3rd: Engineering a banking crisis in Europe (2008-2009)
Jointly introduced by the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Dept., the “Paulson plan’s” redemption of $700 billion in U.S. toxic assets, is passed in the U.S. Congress but without convincing investors. The CAC 40 and Dow Jones are experiencing a historic drop, on “Black Monday” (October 6, 2008). To urgently calm the markets, seven global central banks (U.S., Europe, UK, Canada, Sweden, Switzerland and China) agreed to lower their key rate by half a point.
4th act: into an economic crisis (from 2009)
The financial crisis is rapidly becoming an economic crisis. Many countries fall into recession, consumer spending falls, businesses incur huge losses and are forced to reduce their staff or go bankrupt and unemployment is soaring. In the fall of 2008 to late 2009, the rate rises in France from 7.9% to 10%, the U.S. doubles from 5% to nearly 10% ; in Greece, the rate triples from 8% to over 24%. The automotive sector is particularly affected. In the United States, the U.S. giant General Motors declares bankruptcy in June 2009, just three months after Chrysler.
5th act: Goldman Sachs can now install their pawns in Europe
Greece played the role of a Trojan horse within the European banking governance. First step, get Greece into the euro zone. This is what, Goldman Sachs actively sought by cooking the books, falsifying figures into deliberately underestimating the Greeks already high debt and deficits, including off balance sheet fundraising.
Second step: create a European debt crisis, financially strangling Greece by rising interest rates and expect contagion to other states.
Third step: installing pawns in the states hardest hit by the debt crisis that began in spring 2010: Lucas Papademos, the new Greek Prime Minister, Mario Monti, the new President of the Italian Council of Ministers ( appointed and not elected ) and Mario Draghi, new President of the European Central Bank are all three executives of Goldman Sachs. Lucas Papademos was governor of the Bank of Greece between 1994 and 2002, and as such, actively participated in the embezzlement operations committed by Goldman Sachs.
Mario Monti is an international adviser to Goldman Sachs since 2005, and appointed to the European Commission. He is also the Trilateral Commission President and a member of the Bilderberg group for Europe, two globalist organizations. He is also a founding member of Spineilli group , a think tank that seeks to promote European federalism. Mario Draghi was vice-chairman of Goldman Sachs Europe between 2002 and 2005 and as such, is believed to have led part of the Greek sovereign debt accounts concealment and embellishment.
Fourth step: to bind the most fragile states into loans that can’t be repaid and at prohibitive rates. Given the risk of sovereign default, investors impose impractical terms to countries that can’t find financing in the bond markets. These successive plans include drastic austerity conditions, jeopardizing the social stability of the country.
In Greece, social security is in tatters, the garbage collection is no longer assured, museums are closing one after the other, public television no longer broadcasts, books are disappearing from schools, children are starving. Wages in the private sector declined by 25 % in 2011, the minimum wage is reduced to 586 Euros, bringing down the average wage from 803 Euros in 2012 and then to 580 Euros in 2013, equivalent to the average Chinese wage. Greece is now considered a Third World country.
All loans to Greece are even less likely to jumpstart the economy as they are largely controlled by the financial oligarchy: Greek banks (58 billion), the creditors of the Greek state (101 billion); most of the banks and investment funds have received most of the aid released by the EU and the IMF since 2010 to the tune of 207 billion Euros.
Three-quarters of the aid granted do not benefit citizens but, directly or indirectly, the financial sector. A study from Attac Austria thus shows that only 46 billion was used to bail out the public accounts – and always in the form of loans, while at the same time 34 billion were paid by the State to service its creditors’ debt interest. Private debt held by banks and creditors are being turned into public debt.
Prelude to a world dictatorship of finance.
Will The Troika’s austerity policies be soon extended to the whole continent? And from there to the world? Events in the Ukraine and Venezuela are giving us a glimpse of the “Shock Doctrine” in motion.
This veritable racket imposed on States (and therefore the people) was made possible by the various European treaties: the Maastricht makes the ECB the guarantor of the common currency and the sole master of the monetary policy (Article 105) and the Lisbon engraved in marble the ban on national banks as well as members of the ECB to directly finance sovereign debt and therefore, submits States to the appetites of private “too big to fail” banks (Article 123).
National sovereignty, the main drag on global financial governance, is undermined by these treaties and popular sovereignty gleefully mocked. The popular refusal to vote on the European constitution referendum, whether in France, the Netherlands or Ireland, has not prevented the European Commission from imposing its will. Important decisions in Europe are increasingly made by non-elected officials and lobbyists, in defiance of choices clearly expressed by the citizens.
Are popular or national sovereignty direct obstacles to financial predation? Then just liquidate them altogether! To make the drop of a third of our salaries acceptable, as recommended by Goldman Sachs, the oligarchy wants to set up authoritarian regimes in Europe. JP Morgan believes that radical political reforms repealing democratic constitutional protections of the middle class enacted after the Second World War will be necessary to suppress opposition to the massively unpopular austerity measures ahead.
As expected by the “Shock Doctrine,” social anxiety caused by the crisis has dampened resistance – 2011, the first year of the debt crisis has seen a dramatic decline in the number of days of strikes in Europe – but the oligarchy wants to go further and faster and it is ready to use all means to break any further popular resistance .
Global Collectivism ideology includes the dissolution of the family unit. In order to achieve this, an incessant media attack on traditional marriages and the promotion of alternative lifestyles is affecting popular culture, turning individuals vulnerable, thus serving the Globalists interests.
Making a clean sweep of the past by cutting individuals from their social, familial, national or religious roots, to get a “blank page ” on which to write a new story, is the goal of “The Shock Doctrine.” Greece and its public assets have been devastated by a new form of dictatorship, particularly the destructive banking oligarchy bent on enslaving the whole world… unless the peoples and nations do decide to take back control of their lives.
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