Naomi Klein, the world famous author of No Logo, appeared in Dundee to talk about her new book, The Shock Doctrine. Thrilling and revelatory, The Shock Doctrine cracks open the secret history of our era. Klein discovered information and connections that amazed even her about how the shock doctors were raking in billions out of the tsunami, plundering Russia, exploiting Iraq - this is the chilling tale of how a few are making a killing while more are getting killed. Klein made Dundee her only Scottish stop on a UK tour.
Naomi Klein was always going to have an opinion about the American presidential elections. Most people, it's fair to say, have an opinion about the close race for the most powerful job in the world, but Naomi Klein has an opinion - well formed, long thought over and distinct - about almost everything.
'The best scenario is that Obama wins, that he's the president. But once he's in power, the real work starts,' she says, her hands waving round and her voice animated.
'The expectation will be that the situation in Iraq will change and the question will be how to make it change. Because it won't change on it own and there is an incredible amount of bureaucratic momentum for a continuation of being powerful so it will take a radical policy shift to get away from privatisation and access and it could really break the venture capital economy that exists there.
'All of Obama's advisors are from Wall Street and have no specific knowledge about the disaster capitalism economy. He won't even say that he would not leave companies like Blackwater out of Iraq.
'It takes a vision to get out of that position and Obama does not have that vision. So the next question is of political pressure and political momentum. I'm spending all my time before the election touring University campuses in America and saying, 'Don't be a superfan. Be the pressure that forces this change and just be a bit of a reality check about what Obama is supposed to be, because people get so caught up in the star culture around him - it feels great to be in his presence and you think anything is possible and people aren't stopping to ask him how it's done. They're just rooting for him.
'Obama has unleashed a huge amount of political energy; the question is where do you focus that energy once the popularity contest is over?'
Unusually, Klein doesn't seem to have the answer to her own question, but you imagine she will, eventually. Thinking has almost become a career choice for the young woman who has written two best-selling books, both of which call the power-brokers to justify their actions - and often they simply can't.
Klein has been travelling the world, reading from her second book and raising awareness of the problem and chose Dundee as the only Scottish stop on her tour.
No Logo, published in 2000, lambasts consumer culture, criticising the operations of large corporations. Klein riled Nike so much in the book that they published a multi-point response to the issues she raises. No Logo became an international bestseller, selling over one million copies, and translated into over 28 languages.
Then, eight years later, came The Shock Doctrine which introduces and discusses the idea of economic shock therapy - that the policies of the free market neoliberalism have not risen to prominence because they worked or were popular, but because they were pushed through in the aftermath of a traumatic event, such as a natural disaster, a war, a coup or an economic crisis. It is a fascinating, well-researched and thoroughly argued book that leapt straight to the top of the bestseller charts, despite it's somewhat difficult subject matter.
'I'm a journalist and, more than that, I'm a columnist so I know how to write to hold the attention of the reader. I think a lot of books on similar themes are written by academics who, at the risk of eliminating all academics who read your journal, look to assign their books as homework. I came at it that if you don't grab someone's attention and make them want to read it they will just move on to the next article, and I write books in the same way.'
No Logo was a surprise hit - it propelled the softly spoken Canadian into the limelight, spearheading a new movement of anti-globalization movement brought into the light by the Seattle marches, interrupting the 1999 meeting of the World Trade Organisation. Suddenly, it seemed, people were angry about businesses controlling media, politics and culture. No Logo was the activisits bible and Naomi Klein was their poster girl.
'It was a magical moment because the book came out and the Seattle protests had just happened and there was this incredible momentum around the things I was talking about. So, even as I was being propelled into the media spotlight I wasn't alone, there was a million of us. I wasn't getting famous for the sake of it - there was something going on, there was something political going on that I was a part of and it wasn't about the book and it wasn't about me, it was about the ideals and it was about the issues. I think that made it much less weird than if I had just written a hit book and that was why people knew me.'
Klein's background prepared her to stand up and be counted - her grandfather was fired from Disney for organising a union, her father was a doctor and a Vietnam War resister while her mother directed and scripted an anti-pornography documentary. It's not difficult to imagine that dinner table talk has been stimulating her entire life, but she says that is the only way that her upbringing could be described as spoilt.
'I worked hard all through high school in shops. I suppose, I never thought about it really, I feel very privileged and lucky to come from where I come from but I don't think I was spoilt.'
She pauses and considers the people she spends so much time talking about in her lectures that will never get to read her books or hear her talk.
'But then I suppose it's all relative. Compared to many, many people I am spoilt, of course. But yes, I worked all through school. I never meant to be a writer, all I thought about was moving out of my home and getting a cool apartment. However, I have always written - I was frantic journal keeper and wrote bad teen poetry.
Then I went to university and started working very soon for my college paper and very quickly became editor immediately of the small college paper and then I became editor for the university wide newspaper, a really big paper, but there were reasons behind that ambition.
'The University of Toronto is a huge and impersonal university - 35,000 students - and it's really spread out. Less a university experience than a series of appointments down town, so I really wanted to have a uni experience that was more immersive and the paper offered that because it was a little bubble within the university.
'I loved the people so I got pulled into it immediately and ignored my studies and it was my life and I just started enjoying muckraking on the university campus. We were very good and we had a great team of journalists - I look back at the team now and it's quite amazing - one of them is the chief writer for The Simpsons, somebody else is a top writer at New York Times magazine.
'I started freelancing for the weekly Canadian newspaper and then I got an internship at Canada's national newspaper. That was my first real job and I didn't actually have my degree yet, and the idea was at the end of the summer I would go back and finish my degree but then there was an election and they decided to keep me on through the election and I never actually finished my degree.