The Shock Doctrine: The Clintons and Nelson Mandela!!!!!!!

Boy I'm so glad she brought this up!!!!!!!!




The Shock Doctrine: Setting up South Africa/Screwing Mandela chapter 10

Naomi Kleins writes...pg 199

I went to South africa to try to understand what had happened in the transition, in those key years between 1990 and 1994, to make Mandela take a route that he had described so unequivocally as "inconceivable".

pg 200

South Afica's whites had failed to keep blacks from taking over the government, but when it came to safeguarding the wealth they had amasses under apartheid, they wouldn't give up so easily.

In these talks, the de Klerk government had a two-fold strategy. First, drawing on the ascendant Washington Consensus that there was now only one way to run an economy, it portrayed
whole sectors of economic decision making as "technical" or "administrative." Then it used a wide range of new policy tools-international trade agreements, innovations in constitutional law and structural adjustment programs- to hand control over to those power centers to supposedly impartial experts, economists and officials from the IMF, the World Bank, the GATT and the National Party-anyone except the liberation fighters from the ANC. It was a strategy of balkanization, not of the country's geography(as de Klerk had originally attempted) but of it's economy!

The result......pg 203

Want to redistribute land? Impossible-at the last minute, the negotiators agreed to add a clause to the new constitution that protects all private property, making land reform virtually impossible. Want to create jobs for millions of unemployed workers? Can't-hundreds of factories were actually about to close becasue the ANC had signed on the GATT, the precursor to the World Trade Organization, which made it illegal to subsidize the auto plants and textile factories. Want to get free AIDS drugs to the townships, where disease is spreading with terrifying speed? That violates an intellectual property rights commitment under the WTO, which the ANC signed with no public debate as a continuation of the GATT. Need money to build more and larger houses for the poor and to bring free electricity to the townships? Sorry-the budget is being eaten up servicing the massive debt, passed on quietly by the apartheid government. Print more money? Tell that to the apartheid era central bank. Free water for all? Not likely. The World bank, with it's large in-country contingent of economists, researchers and trainers (a self proclaimed "Knowlege Bank"), is making private-sector service jobs the norm. Want to impose currency controls to guard against wild speculation? That would violate the $850 million IMF deal, signed, conveniently enough, right before the elections. Raise the minimum wage to close the apatheid gap? Nope. The IMF deal promises "wage constraint." And don't even think about ignoring these committments-any change will be regarded as evidence of a dangerous national untrustworthiness, a lack of committment to "reform", an absence of a "rules-base system". All of which will lead to currency crashes, aid cuts and capital flight. The bottom line was the South Africa was free but simultanously captured; each one of these arcane acronyms represented a different thread in the web that pinned down the limbs of the new government.

A longtime anti-apartheid activist, Rassool Snyman, described the trap to me in stark terms. "They never freed us. they only took the chains from around our neck and put it on our ankles."

While it is true that the Washington Consensus started making plans to set-up South Africa at Davos in 1992 before Bill Clinton became President, it is also true that the raping of this new democracy went on for years way into the 90's. Since we have no access to private conversations between Clinton and Mandela we will never know if Bill Clinton tried to help his friend. Especially since the Clintons continue to refuse to discuss anything about the trade agreements they pushed through the Congress!

Of course it tells us what we already know. Old white men from Europe and the US destroyed South Africa to punish them for their freedom.

Of course she didn't include what Naomi wrote.

I am really ashamed of many in the Dem party tearing down the Clintons as they are doing. What have they done to anyone to deserve this rage and hate? I always knew that many disliked the Clintons in largely because he GOT CAUGHT with his zipper down. But the scorn and hate are much deeper than even I ever thought. And to hate Hillary so much for being smart, tough, compassionate, and for having stayed with an adulterous husband because she valued her family more than revenge is something I just can't understand. It's more understandable to me that blacks could be mis-led into believing that the Clintons are playing the race card against Obama, when in fact, it is the media that does this. But absolute rage and hate I for this couple is beyond belief for me. More than disappointed, I am truly saddened and frightened for my party and my country. How fast will the media lead the many Obama supporters down this road. What mistake of human frailty will cause this to happen to him. Maybe it won't ever happen to anybody else because this hate and rage against the Clintons may be unmatched. At this moment, I think most Dems are more enraged over and have more disdain for the Clintons than they do GW Bush.

It appears to me that there was much more forgiveness, reconciliation, and even reverence for JFK and Ted Kennedy where their numerous human flaws, and yes, adulterous affairs. I just don't get it.

Wake me when its over.

However, you will have to be Rumpelstiltskin to wake up when it's over. Not going to happen! That is unless we break up into 2 different parties. We've been so factored by the hate (It's not the black white thing that has factored us so badly...it's the hate...the Rush Limbaugh type side of our party. I don't know if we can ever forgive one another. If we do break up...then maybe the Rethugs will have the nerve to break up the Rethug party too and get rid of the Religious right which they now don't like but depend on so badly. Maybe the whole country will be better off with 4 parties. Then almost everyone can vote for whom they want.