November 1st, 2000By Naomi Klein The United States is supposed to be a culture driven by the worship of success. And yet it seems there is one man for whom success is universally unacceptable: Ralph Nader. Mr. Nader is scolded for his popularity among voters. Ex-friends call him vain, reckless. He should quit, and instruct supporters to vote for Al Gore. The man who was exiled to the margins for this entire campaign—barred from the debates, blacked out from the news—is now at the dead centre of the race. No wonder there are threats being made against Mr. Nader's advocacy group, Public Citizen, headed by Joan Claybrook. "How many progressive congressmen will be prepared to take Joan Claybrook's telephone calls?" demands Jack Blum, counsel to Americans for Democratic Action. It's an empty threat. Mr. Nader has said repeatedly he is running for president precisely because public-interest influence is dead: You need a six-figure donation to buy the ear of Washington politicians. It was this crisis in democracy that led advocacy groups, including Public Citizen, to organize a massive protest during last November's WTO meeting in Seattle. "If you won't listen to us at the table," they said, "you will listen...

01 November, 2000

October 25th, 2000By Naomi Klein Is that Ralph Nader running for Prime Minister? It seemed that way when Jean Chretien entered the election with fists flying at fat cats, millionaires and "radical" right-wingers who care only about "the market forces." Now, admittedly, Mr. Chretien could use an emergency tutorial from Mr. Nader on the etiquette of championing the working class. (Lesson #1: Don't call factory workers uneducated, stunted citizens—as the Prime Minister did on Monday—especially when those workers are the very ones responsible for the economic boom you are hoping to parlay into a third term in office.) But Mr. Chretien is doing his best. He even cancelled a Team Canada trade mission to China. There he was, all set to help Canada's multinational manufacturers find low-wage factories where they can produce their goods cheaply and without pesky unions (presumably, he doesn't think much of factory workers in China either) when he decided to stay home and lecture us about "Canadian values." "I know the rich will take care of themselves," Mr. Chretien boomed on Sunday—except, of course, for the ones on Team Canada trade missions to China. But forget about trade for now. The new compassionate Jean Chretien is...

25 October, 2000

October 6th, 2000By Naomi Klein I knew there was a problem when my mother called my hotel in Prague. She had been watching the news and was under the impression that, if I were at the protests against the World Bank, I was either in hospital or in jail. I told her things got pretty tense for a few minutes but that, on the whole, the protests had been peaceful. "Don't believe everything you see on television, Mom." Only it's hard not to. All week, I've been poring over TV and newspaper reports and all I've seen are Molotov cocktails and flying paving stones. The activists are dismissed as "anti-trade" Luddites. This caricature was drawn most crudely by New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman, who plagiarized his own writing post-Seattle, calling the Prague protesters "a rogues' gallery of Communists, anarchists, protectionist unions and overfed yuppies" determined to "keep poor people poor." If the protesters have any ideas about alleviating poverty, we didn't hear about them. On the streets, the relationship between the press and the protesters has become one of open hostility. The resentment was particularly near the surface in Prague, raising nostalgic memories for journalists who were around for...

06 October, 2000

September 27th, 2000By Naomi Klein What seems to most enrage the delegates to the meeting of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund in Prague this week is the idea that they even have to discuss the basic benefits of free-market globalization. That discussion was supposed to have stopped in 1989, when the Wall fell and history ended. Only here they all are—old people, young people, thousands of them—literally storming the barricades of their extremely important summit. And as the delegates peer over the side of their ill-protected fortress at the crowds below, scanning signs that say "Capitalism Kills," they look terribly confused. Didn't these strange people get the memo? Don't they understand that we all already decided that free-market capitalism was the last, best system? Sure, it's not perfect, and everyone inside the meeting is awfully concerned about all those poor people and the environmental mess, but it's not like there's a choice—is there? For the longest time, it seemed as if there were only two political models: Western capitalism and Soviet communism. When the USSR collapsed, that left only one alternative, or so it seemed. Institutions like the World Bank and IMF have been busily "adjusting" economies...

27 September, 2000

September 20th, 2000By Naomi Klein When I arrived in London on Sunday, the city was like a jittery heroin junkie who had just shot up. The panic that gripped Britain when a coalition of truckers and farmers blockaded the nation's oil refineries had been replaced with an unreal calm. The gas was flowing again and, at the stations, dazed customers injected their tanks with rivers of unleaded. As is the case with any powerful addiction, the fuel crisis hasn't disappeared; it has been, momentarily, sated. Protests against oil taxes are cropping up across Europe and they may well return to Britain after the moratorium called by the truck drivers expires in two months. Canadian truckers are even threatening to mount copycat actions. Watched from a distance, the oil blockades in Britain look like spontaneous popular uprisings: regular working folk, frightened for their livelihoods, getting together to say, "Enough's enough." But before this David and Goliath story goes any further, it deserves a closer reading. There's no doubt that the fuel protests began when a couple hundred farmers and truckers formed blockades outside the oil refineries. But the protests became effective only when the multinational oil companies that run those refineries...

20 September, 2000

September 13th, 2000By Naomi Klein One time, when I was on the phone with Sympatico customer service, I shamelessly abused my privilege as a writer for this newspaper. "Look," I said, "I'm a columnist with The Globe and Mail and I need e-mail access now." Of course, this was an extreme situation: I had tried and retried the connection, reconfigured my settings, reinstalled my modem software, and shut down and restarted my computer 16 times. Only then, when I still couldn't file my column, did I mention The Globe. And let me tell you, things change. I wouldn't dream of threatening journalistic retaliation in exchange for better service, but it seemed to occur to the person to whom I was talking that, if I'm a columnist with The Globe, I might just write one of those columns about Sympatico. And in this purely hypothetical column, I might ask some uncomfortable questions: Why is it that I have to dial long-distance to check my e-mail when I'm outside of Canada—and even when I'm in Vancouver? How come AOL customers are able to make a local call to get on-line in Uzbekistan? And why doesn't the Sympatico toll-free service number work outside...

13 September, 2000

September 6th, 2000By Naomi Klein In New York City today, leaders of 150 countries are gathered for yet another meeting on globalization. Unlike all the other high-level meetings on the same theme, there won't be raucous crowds of environmentalists, workers and human-rights advocates outside, yelling about all the issues that have been bungled by the politicians inside. Why miss a perfectly protestable opportunity like this, in easily accessible, downtown New York? Because the Millennium Summit isn't hosted by one of the many international agencies whose sole mission is to open up markets for free trade, while assuring a wary public that economic growth will magically eliminate poverty and save our ailing planet. This meeting is hosted by the United Nations, which, by its mandate, places human and ecological needs ahead of the voracious demands of the market. Imperfect as the UN system may be, it is generally viewed by critics of globalization as a ray of moral hope on the international stage. More significantly, many activists assume that when the time comes to stop pointing out the failures of corporate-driven globalization and to start advancing an alternative, the UN agencies will be there to help. For instance, the International Labour...

06 September, 2000

August 30th, 2000By Naomi Klein I wasn't thrilled that the Canadian Security Intelligence Service quoted my book in its new report on the anti-globalization "threat." In some of the circles in which I travel, writing for The Globe is enough of a political liability, never mind being a de facto CSIS informant. But there it is on Page 3: No Logo helping CSIS to understand why those crazy kids keep storming trade meetings. Usually, I welcome any and all readers, but I have this sneaking suspicion that, a few months from now, this report is going to be used to justify smashing in the heads of some very good friends of mine. In April, Quebec City will play host to the most significant free-trade summit since the World Trade Organization negotiations collapsed in Seattle last December. At the Summit of the Americas, 34 states will meet with the purpose of launching the Free Trade Area of the Americas—a version of the North American free-trade agreement for the entire hemisphere (except, of course, Cuba). The CSIS report is designed to assess the threat that anti-corporate protests pose to the summit. But, interestingly, it does more than paint activists as latent terrorists...

30 August, 2000

August 23rd, 2000By Naomi Klein When Mayor Mel Lastman distributed 326 naked moose statues to artists around Toronto, he imagined himself as a modern Medici. Just as the Medici family kept Renaissance painters in oils and canvases, he would hand out white fibreglass moose and coupons for Benjamin Moore paint, then sit back and let the magic begin. Mr. Lastman was certain that his beasts would become a vast blank canvas onto which our city's collective creativity, humour and ingenuity would be projected. This had allegedly happened in Chicago, where civic pride was boosted by a herd of painted plastic cows. Or so reported Mel's friend, George Cohon. And Mr. Cohon is an expert in transforming cityscapes with iconic plastic monuments—he brought the Golden Arches to Moscow, as senior chairman of McDonald's Canada. As it turns out, most of the moose paint jobs wouldn't even pass muster as '70s van art—"too literal-minded," the owner of a shag-carpeted Dodge might sniff. But Mel was bang on about one thing. The moose have become a blank slate onto which this city projects its creativity. Only it turns out that most of that creativity involves some form of moose mutilation. Many art critics...

23 August, 2000

August 17th, 2000By Naomi Klein Tonight is the finale for insiders and outsiders in Los Angeles this week: In a few hours, Al Gore will be giving his acceptance speech at the Staples Center. A few feet away, thousands of activists will hold a rally outside. Yet at the Community Convergence Center, a four-story warehouse on Seventh Street in the Pico-Union neighborhood, the mood is more melancholy last day of camp than first day of the revolution. In the rooms upstairs, activists are collapsed on their knapsacks, sleeping. Downstairs, pacing up the middle of the floor, is a cranky punk with a bullhorn: "Somebody took my black hoodie," she booms, referring to that indispensable anarchist accessory, the black hooded sweatshirt. "I want it back now." She pauses to shoot a death stare at a reporter from Channel 22. Nearby, the antisweatshop banner-making sessions seem to be taking place in slow motion, and the mood isn't improved with the return of a handful of activists, back from a demonstration outside Citibank. "How was it?" asks Yuki Kidokoro, one of the LA organizers of the Direct Action Network. "Lame," someone replies. During the Democratic convention, protesters attempted to recapture the legendary energy...

17 August, 2000