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Disaster Capitalism: Making a Killing out of Catastrophe
Crisis, what crisis? How governments and corporations profit from disaster.
Best-selling journalist Antony Loewenstein travels across Afghanistan, Pakistan, Haiti, Papua New Guinea, the United States, Britain, Greece, and Australia to witness the reality of disaster capitalism. He discovers how companies such as G4S, Serco, and Halliburton cash in on organized misery in a hidden world of privatized detention centers, militarized private security, aid profiteering, and destructive mining.
Disaster has become big business. Talking to immigrants stuck in limbo in Britain or visiting immigration centers in America, Loewenstein maps the secret networks formed to help corporations bleed what profits they can from economic crisis. He debates with Western contractors in Afghanistan, meets the locals in post-earthquake Haiti, and in Greece finds a country at the mercy of vulture profiteers. In Papua New Guinea, he sees a local community forced to rebel against predatory resource companies and NGOs.
What emerges through Loewenstein’s reporting is a dark history of multinational corporations that, with the aid of media and political elites, have grown more powerful than national governments. In the twenty-first century, the vulnerable have become the world’s most valuable commodity.
Reviews
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“Chilling study, based on careful and courageous reporting, and illuminated with perceptive analysis, helps us understand all too well the saying that man is a wolf to man.”
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“A journey into a world of mutated economics and corrupt politics that we ignore at our peril.”
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“The forces of disaster capitalism are increasingly on the defensive, but their attacks on the global commons have expanded in the years since I wrote The Shock Doctrine. I am very grateful that Antony Loewenstein has brought his meticulous reporting to this subject, and the result is a keenly observed and timely investigation into rampant resource plunder, privatized detention centers, and an array of other forms of corporate rapacity on four continents. This book will serve as a potent weapon for shock resistors around the world.”
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“A devastating, incisive follow-up to Naomi Klein’s The Shock Doctrine.”
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“Antony Loewenstein offers us a superb description of the diminishing power of national governments and international organisations to exercise power in the modern world”
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“Our economic system now depends upon transforming emergency relief, incarceration and the processing of asylum seekers into profits… [an] unnerving and convincing book”
Blog
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Verso Gift Guide!
We present our go-to-guide for the hard-to-buy-for theory fan in your life, die-hard ACAB enthuasist, Frankfurt School expert, or anyone preparing for a 2017 filled with protests and organizing.
All our books are 50% off until Jan 1. See more details here. See also our End of Year Highlights.
ACAB ENTHUSIASTS:
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"The hegemonic powers of the EU have gone one step too far": On governing borders and the right to move
As Refugee Week approaches on the 20th June, we publish Anna Papoutsi’s case for refugees’ right to move, following the ‘one in, one out’ deal struck between the EU and Turkey. Papoutsi argues that the new deal produces new categories of deservedness for refugees and that it ultimately poses a threat the EU’s entire post-WWII legal construct. Anna Papoutsi is a PhD student based at the University of Birmingham, co-author of “Crisis or Zemblanity? Viewing the ‘Migration Crisis’ through a Greek Lens” and a member of the collective research project Transcapes.
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50% off for May Day!
May 1st marks International Workers' Day, a festival of working-class self-organization stretching back over 130 years. It was originally inaugurated to commemorate the Haymarket Massacre of 1886 in Chicago, where a bomb thrown during a worker's strike kicked off a period of anti-labor hysteria.
May Day 2015 in London saw a rally of trade unions, migrant workers & London’s many communities and other organisations finishing in Trafalgar Square. 2016 demos include speakers such as Yannis Gourtsoyhannia (from the Junior Doctor’s dispute), Christine Blower (the General Secretary of the National Union of Teachers, to talk about the government’s attacks on education), Frances O'Grady (TUC General Secretary), Jeremy Corbyn, and John McDonnell. See the full details here!
In New York there's a rally and march in Union Square on Sunday starting at noon, in Los Angeles there's a May Day March and Bernie Sanders rally on Saturday starting at 3pm, and in Oakland there's a rally at the Fruitvale Bart starting at noon. See an incomplete list of May Day activities here.
This May Day we bring you the following reading list, AND we're doing a FLASH SALE with 50% off all of them! Don't forget - we have free worldwide shipping and free bundled ebooks where available!
