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NAOMI KLEIN, NO GLOBAL SCIENTIST

We usually associate no global movement to the clashes of plaza, destruction, violent confrontation. The movement was born in Seattle in 1999 to contest the iniquitous politics of the World Trade Organization. Among the young people and not gone down in plaza there was also Naomi Klein.

She was born in 1970, Canadian and professional journalist, she is known all over the world for her best seller "no logo" become the "apparent" of the no global movement.

In her book of almost five hundred pages, she completes a very precise analysis of the multinationals and the power that they also practice to the politic level. Nike, Shell, Wal Mart, McDonald, Microsoft, Disney, Naomi has traveled all over the world to understand as they work the great brands.
Nike for exmaple. The logo Nike represents the strength of the American firm and every year they invest millionaire budget to strengthen their brand in the culture collective. The annual engagement of sponsorship for Michael Jordan would be enough for to pay for one year all the workers of the Nike in Asia. The managing directors of the multinationals have fable salaries and contractual gold clauses. Michael Eisner, managing director (until this march) of the Disney, has a hourly salary of € 9783,00 while one his worker perceives 28 cents.
We take a pair of shoes Nike. On the American market they go out with a price of 150 dollars. The real cost is of 30. From the investigation conducted by Naomi Klein it results that worker Nike's daily pay in Vietnam, is of 1,60 dollars. Therefore the difference of 120 dollars to pair of shoes serves only to strengthen the brand and to damage worker conditions of Nike.
It works so for all the great brands, it is rare that multinationals respect worker rights and the developing Countries cannot rise the voice because they need foreign capitals and job (very bad but also always job). "they are the great economic powers that address the political choices of a Country" report Naomi Klein in numerous articles. Multinationals hide themselves behind International Monetary Fund. When a Country is in financial difficulty, the IMF help the Country with the same recipe: to contain the debt and privatize the public sectors opening therefore the road to the multinationals. The movement no global would like to oppose to this global system , but how? And is it possible? Among no global successes is enumerated "battle" of Cochabamba in Bolivia. The FMI in accord with the ex President De Losada, had gotten the privatization of the national water system purchased by the French multinational Suez Lyonnais Des Eaux. This meant that price of the water would not have had a reasonable price anymore and guaranteed by the State. For the farmers of Cochabamba, who depend on the water for their crops, it was an affront.
Revolts and popular revolts have forced to the exile the President De Losada and postponed only of a few years a destiny already marked, the sale of the national public patrimony.
To Naomi Klein and the whole no global movement is blamed to know only to shout for the roads, to make so much noise, to organize Social Forum where however at the end concrete alternatives to the actual unstoppable global economic system don't go out.
The Klein wanted to show that possible alternatives could exist and to do this has chosen a Country that has been the bench of test for the IMF, Argentina.
As in the laboratories where little mouses are chosen for administering the cares and to observe the effects, equally the Fund has used Argentina to experiment in the years '90 the proper ones "cares" economic. Often happens in the laboratories that the administration of a care on the mouses in a first moment produces positive effects but after sometime it provokes the death of it. In practice what has happened in Argentina in the era Menem. Naomi Klein that in the month of March has come in Italy to introduce her documentary "The Take", she has wanted to go in Argentina to study the answer of the Argentinian people to the economic crisis. Ascertained by everybody that the choices of the IMF were wrong, the population has not been to cry. They have studied a form of proletarian expropriation of the closed factories by the crisis. Naomi Klein and her husband Avi Lewis, has lived 6 months in Argentina to document the occupation of the firms. The economic recession has induced many entrepreneurs to stop the activity because not economically profitable, or they didn't guarantee suitable business borders and they were therefore forced to dismiss the workers. Probably business activity was not profitable for the entrepreneurs however perhaps it could be for the workers. Factories with valid industrial fittingses were allowed to rust and they risked to be ransacked. So a group of ex workers of the Zanon has decided to occupy the factory and auto management.
The system was interesting for Naomi Klein and she has individualized in it an alternative system of business management. In practice a holder of enterprise doesn't exist, the decisions are collegially taken and all perceive the same minimum wage. And' interesting to notice as every worker seems to be more responsible because everyone is the owner. In the economic history the collectivization of the production has never had good results; it has failed in Russia of Trotzkij as in Chile of Allende but this time it is different. It is not a political class to impose a system, they are the same workers that find singular solutions for each factory, they decide to manage it in the most opportune way. And' is introduced the concept of democracy partecipativa, pivot of the political ideology no-global experimented with happened by the mayor of Porto Alegre.
In the documentary of Naomi Klein we see step by step the struggle of the workers for the legally expropriation of the Zanon. Argentinian Constitution guarantees the private ownership and therefore such gesture is obviously illegal but the same judges show in the documentary a certain embarrassment to express against the workers. The economic crisis has brought million of people to the indigence and now that the workers have found a solution to survive, the law it is against them! For this the workers of the Zanon decide to act on the political front bringing the matter to the Congress to see approved a law that authorizes the expropriation. They get a resounding success and the documentary finishes with a happy ending, the Zanon is of the workers that have put again standing the activity.
In Argentina other factories with auto management exist and if the jurists can shout to the scandal, we have to remember the economic situation of Argentina.
People's million from one day to the other one they have seen their savings "fly away" by international banks. The sale of the public patrimony has left without job thousand of people, the rates of the water and the gas they are increased. With the documentary "The Take", Naomi Klein has wanted to show that alternatives can exist to the global economy, enough only to want him but the thing most important is that the Argentinian political class seems to have learned the lesson.
The President Nestor Kirchner has marked a cut with the past when the Country was to the service of the multinationals. At the beginning of march Kirchner has invited the citizens to boycott the products of the Shell accused of having unjustifiedly increased of 4,2% the price of the gasoline in 2005.
The President has declared besides that Argentina is not able to pay the affairs on the debt to the IMF and that it won't allow to starve hiscitizens to settle the debt.
"You are not able to see anything in surface yet but underground the fire blazes already" wrote an Indonesian poet. The confrontations no global, the Social Forum, the documentaries as "The Take", the development of the ethical finance, shows how much possible to build a more human alternative to the world without rules of the wild globalization. The people no global with Naomi Klein in head will continue to "to experiment" so that can exist a more correct world.

Federico Bastiani