Discover

'Naomi Klein' is a Canadian journalist, author and activist.
Her grandfather was fired for labor organizing at Disney in the United States. Her father Michael, a physician, was a Vietnam War resister and became a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her film-maker mother, Bonnie, won fame with her anti-pornography film, ''Not a Love Story''.^[1] Her brother Seth is director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Klein's writing career started early with contributions to ''The Varsity'', a University of Toronto student newspaper. She served as editor-in-chief of the newspaper. She credits her wake-up call to feminism as the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre of female engineering students. She is a former Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics.^[2]
In 2000, Klein published the book ''No Logo'', which for many became a manifesto of the anti-globalization movement. This movement had shut down the WTO Meeting of 1999 one month before the release of ''No Logo''. The book lambasts brand-oriented consumer culture by describing the operations of large corporations. These corporations are also often guilty of exploiting workers in the world's poorest countries in pursuit of ever-greater profits, she writes. Klein criticized Nike so much in the book that it became one of the first publications to receive feedback from the company.^[3]
In 2002 Klein published ''Fences and Windows'', a collection of articles and speeches she had written on behalf of the anti-globalization movement (all proceeds from the book go to benefit activist organizations through The Fences and Windows Fund). Klein also contributes to ''The Nation'', ''In These Times'', Canada's ''The Globe and Mail'', ''This Magazine'', and ''The Guardian''.
She has continued to write on various current issues, such as the war in Iraq. In a September 2004 article for ''Harper's Magazine'' entitled "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia",^[4] she argues that, contrary to popular belief and criticisms, the Bush administration did have a clear plan for post-invasion Iraq, which was to build a fully unconstrained free market economy. She describes plans to allow foreigners to extract wealth from Iraq, and the methods used to achieve those goals.
Also in 2004, Klein and her husband, Avi Lewis, released a documentary film called ''The Take'', about factory workers in Argentina who took over the closed plant and resumed production, operating as a collective. The first African screening was in the Kennedy Road shack settlement in the South African city of Durban where the Abahlali baseMjondolo movement began.
In October 2005, Klein was ranked 11th in the The 2005 Global Intellectuals Poll, a list of the world's top 100 public intellectuals compiled by ''Prospect'' magazine^[5] in conjunction with ''Foreign Policy'' magazine. She was the highest ranked woman on the list. ''Prospect'' based the list and its rankings entirely on an Internet poll.^[6]
Naomi Klein's third book, ''The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism'', will be published worldwide in September 2007.

Contents

References

External links

References

1. Bonnie Klein movie: ''Not a love story''
2. http://www.lse.ac.uk/collections/miliband/visitingTeachingFellows.htm
3. Web Archive: Nike's response to ''No Logo''. March 8, 2000
4. Baghdad Year Zero
5. Prospect Magazine List of Top 100 Public Intellectuals
6. Global public intellectuals poll

External links

''Writings and Interviews''

★ The official Naomi Klein website

★ Archive of Naomi Klein's articles at ''The Guardian''

★ Archive of Naomi Klein's articles at ''The Nation''

★ Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia

★ Interview with Naomi Klein about her article "James Baker's Double Life"

★ Download Ms. Klein's talk at Queen's University on November 4, 2004 in mp3 format here.

★ Watch Naomi Klein's Feb, 2005 speech in Vancouver titled "Democratic Rights in Wartime."

★ PBS Frontline online interview with Naomi Klein

★ Alternet Interview with Naomi Klein
''Positive writings about Klein''

★ An Introduction to Naomi Klein's No Logo, a Flash animated movie

★ "Seattle to Baghdad" - A positive assessment of Klein's shift from analyzing 90's corporate culture to the War in Iraq, by Kim Phillips-Fein in n+1 magazine.
''Criticisms of Klein''

★ "Why Naomi Klein needs to grow up", ''The Economist'', November 7, 2002. (Archived at Wayback Machine)

★ "The Rebel Sell: If we all hate consumerism, how come we can’t stop shopping? ", ''This Magazine''