Naomi Klein
|
|
Naomi_Klein.gif
Her grandfather was fired for labor organizing at Disney. Her doctor father, Michael, was a Vietnam War resistor who fled to Canada and became a member of Physicians for Social Responsibility. Her film-maker mother, Bonnie, won fame with her ground-breaking anti-pornography film, Not a Love Story. Her brother Seth is director of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Naomi Klein's writing career started early, contributing to The Varsity, one of the University of Toronto's student newspapers. She credits her wake-up call to feminism as the 1989 massacre of female engineering students by Marc Lepine.
In 2000, just one month after protesters shut down the WTO Meeting of 1999, Klein published the book No Logo, which for many became a manifesto of the anti-globalization movement. The book lambastes the negative effects of brand-oriented consumer culture by describing the operations of large corporations which exist only to peddle a brand. Their products, she argues, turn people into walking billboards. These corporations are also often guilty of exploiting workers in the world's poorest countries in pursuit of ever-greater profits. Klein criticized Nike so much in the book that it became one of the first publications to receive feedback from Nike.
In 2002 Klein published Fences and Windows, a collection of articles and speeches she'd 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 occupation of Iraq. In a September 2004 article for Harper's Magazine entitled "Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia", 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.
Klein gave the annual Dalton K. Camp Lecture in Journalism on October 28, 2004 at St. Thomas University in Fredericton, New Brunswick. She also spoke at the tenth anniversary celebration of Stauffer Library at Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario on November 4, 2004, and at the Navigating A New World Conference on November 6, along with Lloyd Axworthy, Linda McQuaig, Roméo Dallaire, Thomas Homer-Dixon, and Irshad Manji.
Also in 2004, Klein and her husband, Canadian television journalist Avi Lewis, released a documentary called The Take, which profiled a group of laid off auto-parts workers in Argentina who took back control of their plant and turned it into a cooperative.
External links
- The No Logo website (http://www.nologo.org)
- An Introduction to Naomi Klein's No Logo (http://www.jasondiceman.com/projects/no_logo_doc), a Flash animated movie
- Archive of Naomi Klein's articles at The Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/Columnists/Archive/0,5673,-991,0.html)
- Archive of Naomi Klein's articles at The Nation (http://www.thenation.com/directory/bios/bio.mhtml?id=337)
- Baghdad Year Zero: Pillaging Iraq in pursuit of a neocon utopia (http://www.harpers.org/BaghdadYearZero.html)
- Interview with Naomi Klein about her article "James Baker's Double Life" (http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=04/10/13/144220)
- Download Ms. Klein's talk at Queen's University on November 4, 2004 in mp3 format here. (http://www.cfrc.ca/)
- PBS Frontline online interview with Naomi Klein (http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/persuaders/interviews/klein.html)
- Alternet Interview with Naomi Klein (http://www.alternet.org/story/21099/)
- The Take (http://www.thetake.org) - Official website
- Face Value: Why Naomi Klein needs to grow up (http://www.economist.com/printedition/displayStory.cfm?Story_ID=1429429), an opposing view by the Economist magazineca:Naomi Klein
de:Naomi Klein fr:Naomi Klein ja:ナオミ・クライン no:Naomi Klein pl:Naomi Klein sv:Naomi Klein