Zeno Swijtink
05-21-2008, 10:39 PM
Stephan Schwartz, who recommended this posting, writes: "When one reads or listens to the language of the Homeland Security apparatchiks one has to wonder how far we are from this. All done in the name of democracy and security, of course. Naomi Klein is the author of the recent "must read" book, Shock Doctrine. Electing Barack Obama, quite apart from partisan politics, is probably the best, and last, chance we citizens will have to dismantle the incipient soft police state that is developing in the U.S. I say this because he has not spent his life in the security apparat, and will see with fresh eyes its ethical compromises. Even conservatives, indeed, especially conservatives, should be supporting him."
China's All-Seeing Eye
NAOMI KLEIN - Rolling Stone
https://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/6/8/9/6/20796986-20796989-slarge.jpg
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it - thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port - to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture - the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats - a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.
cont. at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/1
China's All-Seeing Eye
NAOMI KLEIN - Rolling Stone
https://i.realone.com/assets/rn/img/6/8/9/6/20796986-20796989-slarge.jpg
With the help of U.S. defense contractors, China is building the prototype for a high-tech police state. It is ready for export.
Thirty years ago, the city of Shenzhen didn't exist. Back in those days, it was a string of small fishing villages and collectively run rice paddies, a place of rutted dirt roads and traditional temples. That was before the Communist Party chose it - thanks to its location close to Hong Kong's port - to be China's first "special economic zone," one of only four areas where capitalism would be permitted on a trial basis. The theory behind the experiment was that the "real" China would keep its socialist soul intact while profiting from the private-sector jobs and industrial development created in Shenzhen. The result was a city of pure commerce, undiluted by history or rooted culture - the crack cocaine of capitalism. It was a force so addictive to investors that the Shenzhen experiment quickly expanded, swallowing not just the surrounding Pearl River Delta, which now houses roughly 100,000 factories, but much of the rest of the country as well. Today, Shenzhen is a city of 12.4 million people, and there is a good chance that at least half of everything you own was made here: iPods, laptops, sneakers, flatscreen TVs, cellphones, jeans, maybe your desk chair, possibly your car and almost certainly your printer. Hundreds of luxury condominiums tower over the city; many are more than 40 stories high, topped with three-story penthouses. Newer neighborhoods like Keji Yuan are packed with ostentatiously modern corporate campuses and decadent shopping malls. Rem Koolhaas, Prada's favorite architect, is building a stock exchange in Shenzhen that looks like it floats - a design intended, he says, to "suggest and illustrate the process of the market." A still-under-construction superlight subway will soon connect it all at high speed; every car has multiple TV screens broadcasting over a Wi-Fi network. At night, the entire city lights up like a pimped-out Hummer, with each five-star hotel and office tower competing over who can put on the best light show.
cont. at https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/20797485/chinas_allseeing_eye/1