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Around the world, such plans have met with resistance. Iraq is no exception. In an article for Harper’s, Klein told the story of a soap factory that Bremer sought to privatize. “We were shocked” to hear about the plans to sell off the company, one young employee recalled. “If the private sector buy…

Naomi Klein doesn’t look like anyone’s stereotype of an antiglobalization activist: no dreadlocks, no piercings. It’s not that she doesn’t understand the impulse. Punks and anarchists articulate their rejection of brands and consumer society in their very appearance, and their styles reflect a subc…

For in the early 1990s, corporations and their boosters spoke like utopians—promising wealth and democracy for all, envisioning a new belle époque of global peace and prosperity. New York Times columnist Thomas Friedman devised the “Golden Arches Theory of Conflict Prevention,” according to which n…

Really everyone who wins the Nobel Prize does seem overrated. Is this the best anyone can do? you wonder. Note to self, she thinks: Don’t win Nobel Prize. So far there is little danger. Three months ago she sent out her best short story to five publications; the result to date is two perfunctory re…

Obviously the problem of belatedness afflicts Coetzee still. In the final lesson of Elizabeth Costello our heroine is called before a mysterious border-town tribunal which demands a “statement” from her before they will let her pass through—to peace, to death, one is not sure. “The wall, the gate, …