Both Inspiring/enlightening and discouraging. Much has remained the same or has gotten worse. Great writing; well deserved praise for her reports and observations, she nails it frequently:
"....when Wally Olins, co-founder of... brand consultancy, was asked for his take on America’s image problem, he complained that people don’t have a single clear idea about what the country stands for but rather have dozens if not hundreds of ideas that ”are mixed up in people’s heads in a most extraordinary way. So you will often find people both admiring and abusing America, even in the same sentence.”....
Having conflicting views about the U.S.- admiring its creativity, for instance, but resenting its double standards- doesn’t mean you are mixed up” to use Olin’s phrase, it means you are paying attention.”
The possibilities-...”’the participatory budget,’ a system that allows direct citizen participation in the allocation of scarce city resources. Through a network of neighbourhood and issue councils, residents vote directly on which roads will be paved and which health care facilities will be built. In Porte Alegre (Brazil), this devolution of power has brought results that are the mirror opposite of global economic trends. For instance, rather than scaling back on public services for the poor, as is the case nearly everywhere else, the city has increased those services substantially. And rather than spiralling cynicism and voter dropout, democratic participation increases every year.”

more writings on the evils of corporations and globalization. good stuff

I am so so glad to have read this. It took me forever bc every page is heavily annotated, but it was totally worth it. Klein is very very smart and provides the kind of analysis that you cant get from the mainstream or a politics a level bc they pretend the only options are neoconservatism or neoliberalism. neoliberalism is the worst thing man it makes me so angry
this book also deals a lot with terrorism. I think it's a totally necessary read in this regard. terrorism is a stupid term used mainly for propaganda. the USA shooting down civilian airplanes killing hundreds doesnt count as terrorism, but peaceful protest does? thats where you realise it is bullshit.
Another aspect is protests. People view any form of activist group as bad because theyre challenging elected politicians and therefore democracy. When people expressing their views is the most democratic thing!!! the point is democracy is a word that has been captured and used as a propaganda tool by the west, when western democracies are nowhere close to a true democracy. But you cant criticise them because "its worse elsewhere" it makes me sick.

I learnt about so many things i had never heard of. the us funding anti democratic terrorist groups and coups in Guatemala and Nicaragua. the battle for seattle, the zapatistas. to name a few

It invites us to question how we protect ourselves and close ourselves off from the world. In times where security is associated with fences and borders, the book reminds us that sometimes looking  Outdoor , with an open perspective, is the real key to understanding globalization.”

Over twenty years after publishing and it seems things have only gotten worse in our world. That being said, the lessons learned from this book remain important and applicable to advocacy and organizing today. As usual, Klein writes beautifully and accessibly - her essays reflect the struggles of millions worldwide and synthesize the pieces of a decentralized movement clearly. Despite the apparent lack of progress between the turn of the century and now, Klein's words inspire hope and action in me!

This book is very situated within the time it is written. As a collection of essays and articles Klein wrote for major newspapers and other outlets this shouldn’t be surprising, but it is quite obvious reading it in the 2020’s. The thesis of the book is very intimately wrapped up in the moment of its writing: that the post-WTO Seattle protests presented a watershed movement for activism. It was the beginning of a distributed anti-globalization movement that had no singular ideology. It was the beginning of networked communication between activist groups. It was, she claims, the beginning of more concerted efforts from law enforcement to stifle protests and activists.

I don’t know if all of these hold up now but it’s quite interesting to read in hindsight. The fractured, distributed nature of the anti-globalization movement lead absolutely nowhere. I don’t think you can argue that it posed a serious challenge to the existing structure of our global society. Maybe from an optics perspective there’s a heightened awareness, and there are definitely some outgrowths of this that persist to this day (ethical coffee, go local agriculture etc.) but it’s not a serious challenge to the business as usual that has persisted.

I also don’t know if her thoughts on the ramping up of enforcement against protesters holds up. One would argue in the wake of 2001 and the passing of the PATRIOT act, there were definitely more powers given to law enforcement to aid in “national security”, but I don’t know if the examples Klein uses that were personally happening to her and others around her were quite so unprecedented. The surveillance and disruption of the Civil Rights Movement and other activist groups by both the FBI and the CIA during the 20th century is well documented. Undoubtedly all of this was abhorrent, but it felt more like Klein was reacting to it more vividly due to the personal nature of these events.

The last aspect was the most interesting which was the book as a document of the beginning nature of online activism. It was clear that in those early days the focus was much more on finding others and coordinating for in-person activism. It provided an enormously valuable forum for the exchange of ideas between activists across national boundaries and organize. Contrasting with today, where online activism is almost a pejorative, given the focus on merely expressing disapproval of a topic.

Overall, not the most interesting book. If you’re familiar with Klein, none of this will be a surprise to you. Many of the ideas were rehashed and reused over the course of the book due to the nature of its collection. Though there some interesting nuggets if you ever do want to dive in (the commentary on the internet, some of the writing on the Zapatistas)

I found this to be real hit and miss and mostly miss, there was a lot of forgettable pieces in here, pieces about the world social forum and the Zapatistas. I found Klein to be a little too enamored with the idea of a decentralized network as the precursor of a revolution

This book gave for me, an industrial engineering student, new perspectives to politics and economy. Economy is not simple, especially global economy. I feel a bit contradictory, but that's just good. I have a lot to think.

I bought this a couple months ago off a clearance rack. I kept telling myself that I was going to read this, but for some reason I didn't. I'm reading through Naomi Klein's books and I started with No Logo which I liked. This follow up isn't as good as No Logo but I did enjoy reading it.

The book is a collection of many articles profiling globalization, protests, Canadian politics and social organizing. I found the sections on the criminalization of protesting and the weaponization of terrorist rhetoric to be fascinating. The chapter on Subcomandante Marcos was particularly interesting to me.

Reading this in 2019 certainly dates many of the topics in the book. Many of the pre 9-11 topics seem to be lost in history. I feel like next to no one anymore talks about anti-globalization and neoliberalism in the fashion mentioned in this book.

a wide variety of stories to match the globalisation theme - all worrying in their precedent and scope; courageous author

It's an eye opening book about where and how our food comes from, how capitalism affects the poorer classes on a global scale so that most of us can live more comfortably--or rather how big corporations exploit the poor and undeveloped to increase profits. It's not as good as "No Logo" or "Shock Doctrine," but it still gets you thinking about how to help change the global economy before the entire planet is destroyed.

Yes...yes....I am reading her book again. This time it was volunteering. As a former Mass Communication student, Globalisation watcher, and a CURRENT World Bank loan beneficiary agent......I MUST read this book to keep my feet on the ground and my eye on the reality.

Besides, it is easier to watch the predator's moves from its own nest