 Penguin presents The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein, read by Catherine Fenton. Introduction Blank is beautiful. Three decades of erasing and remaking the world. Now the earth was corrupt in God's sight, and the earth was filled with violence, and God saw that the earth was corrupt, for all flesh had corrupted its ways upon the earth. And God said to Noah, I have determined to make an end of all flesh, for the earth is filled with violence because of them. Now I am going to destroy them along with the earth. Genesis chapter 6 verse 11, NRSV. Shock and awe are actions that create fears, dangers and destruction that are incomprehensible to the people at large, specific elements, sectors of the threat society, or the leadership. Nature in the form of tornadoes, hurricanes, earthquakes, floods, uncontrolled fires, famine and disease can engender shock and awe. Shock and awe, achieving rapid dominance, the military doctrine for the US war on Iraq. I met Jamar Perry in September 2005 at the Big Red Cross shelter in Baton Rouge, Louisiana. Dinner was being doled out by grinning young Scientologists, and he was standing in line. I had just been busted for talking to evacuees without a media escort, and was now doing my best to blend in. A white Canadian in a sea of African American Southerners. I dodged into the food line behind Perry, and asked him to talk to me as if we were old friends, which he kindly did. Born and raised in New Orleans, he'd been out of the flooded city for a week. He looked about 17, but told me he was 23. He and his family had waited forever for the evacuation buses. When they didn't arrive, they had walked out in the baking sun. Finally they ended up here, a sprawling convention center, normally home to pharmaceutical trade shows and capital city carnage, the ultimate in steel cage fighting. Now jammed with 2,000 cots and a mess of angry, exhausted people being patrolled by edgy National Guard soldiers just back from Iraq. The news racing around the shelter that day was that Richard Baker, a prominent Republican congressman from this city, had told a group of lobbyists, we finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did. Joseph Canizaro, one of New Orleans wealthiest developers, had just expressed a similar sentiment. Sample complete. Ready to continue?