Naomi Klein mentions interesting fact about Hillary's Burston-Marsteller firm [View All]

Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist and the Worldwide CEO of international public relations/ lobbying firm Burson-Marsteller, wrote those telling words in his confidential internal corporate blog.

Given the breadth of his company’s representation of special interests, Penn’s assertion may be the understatement of the year. The number of Burson-Marsteller clients — both corporations and foreign governments — that will likely try to influence the next administration is staggering.

And so is the potential for a serious conflict of interest. As a campaign strategist, Penn meets and speaks constantly with both Clintons and with other key policy advisors. He is in a unique position to influence what the candidate supports or opposes — not only during the campaign but also later on in a future Clinton administration. And he has ample opportunity to weigh in on issues that are vital to Burson-Marsteller’s clients.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,303681,00.html

In Naomi Klein's book, The Shock Doctrine, she writes about the violence used to implement the coups in Chile in 1973 and in Argentina in 1976. After describing how union leaders were rounded up, paraded around and tortured in the Ford facility in Argentina and how high school students who organized to demand lower bus fare in 1976 were also rounded up, tortured and how six of them were killed, Klein states:

In unguarded moments, some of those on the front lines of the economic transformation have acknowledged that the achieving of their goals required mass repression. Victor Emmanuel, the Burson-Marsteller public relations executive who was in charge of selling the Argentine junta's new business-friendly regime to the outside world, told a researcher that violence was necessary to open up Argentina's "protective, statist" economy. "no one, but no one, invests in a country involved in a civil war," he said, but he admitted that it wasn't just guerillas who died. "A lot of innocent people were probably killed," he told author Marguerite Feitlowitz, but "given the situation, immense force was required."

I would like to ask Hillary supporters to ask their candidate to comment on whether Burson-Marsteller has ever taken responsibility for its role in supporting and enabling the terrible state terrorism that took place in Argentina after the 1976 coup. It is time for Ford, Burson-Marsteller and any other American company that was involved in the repression in Chile and Argentina to take responsibility and denounce the crimes committed by the right wings in those countries at that time.

Be sure to read Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine. I plan to post further short excerpts in order to encourage DUers to read this important book.