[To be fair, I read an excerpt from the book, but it seemed enough to give a good flavour for it. Here is the excerpt I read.]

Klein is the anti-capitalist crusader this capitalist happens to enjoy. In No Logo, she shows how admirably resilient the capitalist system is.

Hate capitalism? Great, we're with you! Here's this t-shirt with anti-capitalist slogans, why not buy it to express your feelings?

Hate government? All we can do is shoot you or ignore you.

Sure, capitalism has faults, but it can adapt to new conditions like crazy. Government failed to provide the simplest of resources after Katrina, but there was Wal*Mart, hours after the disaster, speeding its familiar trucks to the scene to bring vital supplies to the worst-hit areas. Naomi Klein ignores Wal*Mart, of course, and would probably die before shopping there, but I can't ignore one of Katrina's few feel-good stories.

In her latest book, she claims that capitalists took advantage of the shock of war and disaster to advance their agenda. And of course they did, just as government took advantage of the same war and disaster to pass more restrictive laws and expand the reach of government.

She claims that before 9/11, unionized baggage inspectors were replaced by contractors who got $6.95 an hour. The weapons that made 9/11 possible were therefore missed, and the attack might have been averted if we'd kept those union guys.

But I ask, would unionized inspectors have done a better job? The $6.95 an hour guys weren't asked to look for certain things, so they didn't. Unionized inspectors paid $27.95 an hour plus benefits would not have asked to look for the same things, and would have therefore missed them.

The problem was the policy, not the people; this is indeed ironically an insult to the hard-working $6.95 crew who, if my experience is any guide, were probably more courteous and pleasanter to deal with than the $27.95 guys would have been.

Klein appears to think the public sector is shiny perfection while the private is untrammelled greed. But, at least in the excerpts I've read, she doesn't place any evidence to prove this; she just assumes it's self-evident. Let's just say that her experiences of the public sector have been far better than mine.

Her familiar writing style is as smooth as ever, and she has the ability to pick out telling facts and quotes. But at the same time, her bias against private industry makes this book less helpful than it should have been; like many writers with a mission, she takes her own side and ignores the rest.

The raw facts presented in this book are interesting, but there are a lot of strange gaps. If you want the full story, you'll find it in less biased books than this one. Or by reading both this book and one with the opposite bias.

D

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