Public infrastructure around the world is facing unprecedented stress, with hurricanes, cyclones, floods and forest fires all increasing in frequency and intensity. It's easy to imagine a future in which growing numbers of cities have their frail and long-neglected infrastructures knocked out by disasters and then are left to rot, their core services never repaired or rehabilitated.
Naomi KleinThere's a property in Panama where Trump has collected somewhere around $30 million just from selling his name to this property - it's somewhere between $30 million and $50 million. It would be so easy for a developer to slap on an extra $6 million to a Trump licensing deal and have that be a backdoor bribe. Who are we to say what that is worth? It's so ephemeral. And this is the appeal of selling something as ephemeral as a brand name, is that it can be inflated beyond all reason.
Naomi KleinWe live in this culture of endless extraction and disposal: extraction from the earth, extraction from people's bodies, from communities, as if there's no limit, as if there's no consequence to how we're taking and disposing, and as if it can go on endlessly. We are reaching the breaking point on multiple levels. Communities are breaking, the planet is breaking, people's bodies are breaking. We are taking too much.
Naomi KleinCatching Trump out not paying his taxes, treating his employees like garbage - none of this sticks to him because that actually reinforces his power, power over other people, which is this specific kind of power that he's selling.
Naomi KleinOur enslavement to oil has required the repression of millions of Arab people. As they shake off their bonds, so must we.
Naomi Klein