December 18th, 2003By Naomi Klein It's 8:40 am and the Sheraton Hotel ballroom thunders with the sound of plastic explosives pounding against metal. No, this is not the Sheraton in Baghdad, it's the one in Arlington, Virginia. And it's not a real terrorist attack, it's a hypothetical one. The screen at the front of the room is playing an advertisement for "bomb resistant waste receptacles": This trash can is so strong, we're told, it can contain a C4 blast. And its manufacturer is convinced that given half a chance, these babies would sell like hotcakes in Baghdad — at bus stations, Army barracks and, yes, upscale hotels. Available in Hunter Green, Fortuneberry Purple and Windswept Copper. This is ReBuilding Iraq 2, a gathering of 400 businesspeople itching to get a piece of the Iraqi reconstruction action. They are here to meet the people doling out the cash, in particular the $18.6 billion in contracts to be awarded in the next two months to companies from "coalition partner" countries. The people to meet are from the Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA), its new Program Management Office, the Army Corps of Engineers, the US Agency for International Development, Halliburton, Bechtel and members of...

18 December, 2003

November 25th, 2003By Naomi Klein In December, 1990, U.S. President George Bush Sr. traveled through South America to sell the continent on a bold new dream: "a free trade system that links all of the Americas." Addressing the Argentine Congress, he said that the plan, later to be named the "Free Trade Area of the Americas" would be "our hemisphere's new declaration of interdependence ...

25 November, 2003

November 6th, 2003By Naomi Klein Cancel the contracts. Ditch the deals. Rip up the rules. Those are a few suggestions for slogans that could help unify the growing movement against the occupation of Iraq. So far, activist debates have focused on whether the demand should be for a complete withdrawal of troops, or for the United States to cede power to the United Nations. But the "Troops Out" debate overlooks an important fact. If every last soldier pulled out of the Gulf tomorrow and a sovereign government came to power, Iraq would still be occupied: by laws written in the interest of another country, by foreign corporations controlling its essential services, by 70 percent unemployment sparked by public sector layoffs. Any movement serious about Iraqi self-determination must call not only for an end to Iraq's military occupation, but to its economic colonization as well. That means reversing the shock therapy reforms that US occupation chief Paul Bremer has fraudulently passed off as "reconstruction" and canceling all privatization contracts flowing from these reforms. How can such an ambitious goal be achieved? Easy: by showing that Bremer's reforms were illegal to begin with. They clearly violate the international convention governing the behavior...

06 November, 2003

October 24th, 2003By Naomi Klein When massive political protests forced Bolivia's president to resign last week, Gonzalo Sanchez de Lozada fled to a place where he knew he would find a sympathetic ear. "I'm here in Miami trying to recover from the shock and shame," the ex-president told reporters on Saturday, after being unseated by a revolt against his plan to sell the country's gas to the U.S. Fortunately for Mr. Sanchez de Lozada, there are plenty of other Miami residents who know just how shocking and shameful it feels to lose power to a left-wing resurgence in Latin America. So many, in fact, that he could form a local support group for suffers of post-revolutionary stress disorder. Possible members: Venezuela's ex-president Carlos Andres Perez, who started living part-time in Miami after he was impeached in 1993 on corruption charges, as well as fellow Venezuelan-Miamista Carlos Fernandez, one of the leaders of the failed coup against President Hugo Chavez. Ecuador's ex-president Gustavo Noboa might also stop by, since he tried to flee to Miami in August to avoid a corruption investigation at home. To bring a sense of history, the beach house bitch session could be filled out by Francisco...

24 October, 2003

October 10th, 2003By Naomi Klein Fighting AIDS was supposed to show George W. Bush's softer side. "Seldom has history offered a greater opportunity to do so much for so many," he said in his State of the Union address this past January. He has since reconsidered, deciding instead to offer a few more opportunities to the few. First he handed the top job of his Global AIDS initiative to a Big Pharma boss, then he broke his $3 billion promise of AIDS relief and now there are concerns that he may sabotage a plan to send cheap drugs to countries ravaged by AIDS. This past August, the World Trade Organization announced a new deal on drug patents that was supposed to give poor countries facing health problems the right to import generic drugs. But the deal seemed unworkable: the United States, at the behest of the pharmaceutical lobby, had successfully pushed for so many conditions that the agreement exploded from a straightforward fifty-two words to a sprawling 3,200-word maze. Countries wanting to import cheap generics must jump through multiple hoops to prove they are truly in need, unable to afford patented drugs and incapable of producing the medicines domestically. Meanwhile,...

10 October, 2003

September 23rd, 2003By Naomi Klein It used to be that if there was one thing you could count in matters of international trade, it was the desperation of the poor. No matter how bad the deal, it was always better than nothing. But all of a sudden, poor countries are busting up trade rounds, standing up to the International Monetary Fund, and turning down foreign investment. What's going on? Is it possible that when you've lost enough, desperation turns into defiance? Take the people of Esquel, a small city in Southern Argentina. A year ago, the U.S-Canadian gold mining company Meridian purchased Britain's Bancote Holdings, which owned a gold deposit in Esquel estimated at (U.S.) $1-billion. The time seemed to be right to build a huge open pit mine: gold was selling high and Argentina, with its ravaged economy, was selling low. The company informed the city of Esquel that it was about to be the lucky recipient of 400 mining jobs. It slapped together an Environmental Impact Assessment, assured the community that using 2700 kg of cyanide a day was no riskier than driving to work, and got ready to start digging. So did the community. Not for gold,...

23 September, 2003

September 11th, 2003By Naomi Klein On Monday, seven anti-privatization activists were arrested in Soweto for blocking the installation of prepaid water meters. The meters are a privatized answer to the fact that millions of poor South Africans cannot pay their water bills. The new gadgets work like pay-as-you-go cell phones, only instead of having a dead phone when you run out of money, you have dead people, sickened by drinking cholera-infested water. On the same day South Africa's "water warriors" were locked up, Argentina's negotiations with the International Monetary Fund bogged down. The sticking point was rate hikes for privatized utility companies. In a country where 50 percent of the population is living in poverty, the IMF is demanding that multinational water and electricity companies be allowed to increase their rates by a staggering 30 percent. At trade summits, debates about privatization can seem wonkish and abstract. On the ground, they are as clear and urgent as the right to survive. After September 11, right-wing pundits couldn't bury the globalization movement fast enough. We were gleefully informed that in times of war, no one would care about frivolous issues like water privatization. Much of the US antiwar movement fell into...

11 September, 2003

August 26th, 2003By Naomi Klein The Marriot Hotel in Jakarta was still burning when Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, Indonesia's coordinating minister for political and security affairs, explained the implications of the day's attack."Those who criticize about human rights being breached must understand that all the bombing victims are more important than any human rights issue."In a sentence, we got the best summary yet of the philosophy underlying Bush's so-called "war on terror." Terrorism doesn't just blow up buildings; it blasts every other issue off the political map. The spectre of terrorism, real and exaggerated, has become a shield of impunity, protecting governments around the world from scrutiny for their human rights abuses.Many have argued that the war on terror is the United States government's thinly veiled excuse for constructing a classic Empire, in the model of Rome or Britain. Two years into the crusade, it's clear that this is a mistake: the Bush gang doesn't have the stick-to-it-ness to successfully occupy one country, let alone a dozen.Bush and the gang do, however, have the hustle of good marketers, and they know how to contract-out. What Bush has created in the WoTâ„¢ is less a "doctrine" for world domination than an easy...

26 August, 2003

August 13th, 2003By Naomi Klein What does it take to become a major news story in the summer of Arnold and Kobe, Ben and Jen? A lot, as a group of young Philippine soldiers discovered recently. On July 27, 300 soldiers rigged a giant Manila shopping mall with C-4 explosives, accused one of Washington's closest allies of blowing up its own buildings to attract US military dollars — and still barely managed to make the international news. That's our loss, because in the wake of the Marriott bombing in Jakarta and newly leaked intelligence reports claiming that the September 11 attacks were hatched in Manila, it looks like Southeast Asia is about to become the next major front in Washington's War on Terror.â„¢ The Philippines and Indonesia may have missed the cut for the Axis of Evil, but the two countries do offer Washington something Iran and North Korea do not: US-friendly governments willing to help the Pentagon secure an easy win. Both Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Indonesian President Megawati Soekarnaputri have embraced Bush's crusade as the perfect cover for their brutal cleansing of separatist movements from resource-rich regions — Mindanao in the Philippines, Aceh in Indonesia. The Philippine...

13 August, 2003

July 16th, 2003By Naomi Klein In sports, as in life, "security" trumps peace. That's what happened when the International Olympic Committee faced a choice between Pyeongchang, South Korea and Vancouver for the 2010 Winter Games. South Korea pitched itself as the Peace Candidate: with the world in turmoil, bring the games to the very border of George Bush's "Axis of Evil" and make a gesture of reconciliation. Vancouver, on the other hand, sold itself as the Safety and Security Candidate: with the world in turmoil, hold the games somewhere you can be almost certain that nothing will happen. The Vancouver-Whistler Olympic bid presented the province of British Columbia as a model of harmonious, sustainable living, a place where everyone gets along: Native and non-Native, rural and urban, rich and poor. Before the vote, IOC President Jacques Rogge tipped his hand by declaring South Korean's peace theme to be "secondary" and telling the Los Angeles Times that his top priority was "the best possible security." But two weeks after the euphoric celebrations, the new-age sheen on Vancouver's harmony sales pitch is already wearing off. "I'm going to stop them," Rosalin Sam of the Lil'wat Nation told me. "I'll lay in the...

16 July, 2003