Naomi Klein

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Naomi Klein
Image:NaomiKlein.jpg
Born	May 5 1970 (1970-05-05) (age 39) Montreal, Quebec
Occupation	journalist, author, activist
Subjects	anti-globalization
Website	NaomiKlein.org

Naomi Klein (b. 5 May 1970) is a Canadian journalist, author and activist well known for her political analyses of corporate globalization.

[edit] Early life

Klein was born in Montreal, Quebec. Her family has a history of activism, as does that of her husband, Avi Lewis. Her grandfather was fired for labour 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 Sherr Klein, won fame with her anti-pornography film, Not a Love Story.^[1][2] Her brother Seth is director of the British Columbia office of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. Her in-laws are Michele Landsberg and Stephen Lewis, son of David Lewis. An aunt is married to Daniel Libeskind, the architect.

[edit] Education

Klein's writing career started early with contributions to The Varsity, a University of Toronto student newspaper, where she served as editor-in-chief. She credits her wake-up call to feminism as the 1989 École Polytechnique massacre of female engineering students.

Klein once lectured as a Miliband Fellow at the London School of Economics.^[3]

[edit] Career in journalism

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 accused of being 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.^[4]

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, The Globe and Mail, This Magazine, and The Guardian.^[5][6]

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",^[7] 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.^[8][9]

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.^[10]

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^[11] 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.^[12][13][14]

Naomi Klein's third book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, was published on 4 September 2007.

[edit] Books

• No Logo: No Space, No Choice, No Jobs (2000) ISBN 0312421435
• Fences and Windows: Dispatches from the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate (2002) ISBN 0312307993
• The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism (2007) ISBN 0805079831

[edit] References

[edit] External links

• Official website
• Search for Naomi Klein's articles at The Guardian
• Index of Naomi Klein's articles at The Nation

[edit] Media

• Video: The Shock Doctrine by Alfonso Cuarón and Naomi Klein
• Video: An Introduction to Naomi Klein's No Logo
• Video: A conversation with author Naomi Klein

Persondata
NAME	Klein, Naomi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	journalist, author, activist
DATE OF BIRTH	May 5, 1970
PLACE OF BIRTH	Montreal, Quebec
DATE OF DEATH
PLACE OF DEATH

ar:ناعومي كلاين

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