Fences and Windows: Dispatches From the Front Lines of the Globalization Debate by Naomi Klein, Vintage Canada, 267 pages, $22.95

The Plan to defeat The Man, a quick summary: Girl (Naomi Klein) writes book (No Logo) about the anti-corporate backlash provoked by all-pervasive branding and marketing techniques. Activist community thinks it doesn't go far enough. Business community thinks it goes far too far. The general public proceeds to buy many, many, many copies, as it eventually morphs from bestseller into cultural phenomenon.

That the business community was upset at Klein's No Logo shows how much cotton candy journalism they received during the '90s bull market. That the activist community was disappointed demonstrates the depth of disgust capitalism provokes in unbelievers.

That the general public pushed sales into the ionosphere means many people now realize that brands are bad, in the same way that The Hidden Persuaders taught us advertising is bad, Silent Spring informed us that pesticides are bad and Future Shock argued that tomorrow is bad. In raising the collective consciousness, No Logo was a throwback to the mass market paperbacks of the 1950s and 60s -- books that delivered controversial ideas to a citizenry eager to engage in intellectual discourse.

Where No Logo described a rag-tag anti-globalization movement about to flourish (the book was being printed when the Battle in Seattle erupted in November of 1999), Fences and Windows is more retrospective. Klein argues in the intro that the two years bookended by Seattle and 9/11 provide a unique epoch in the anti-globalization fight worthy of chronicle. Much of her post-9/11 writing, however, lacks the perspective afforded by time and distance. Klein is at her best discussing pre-9/11 issues: "To hear the line coming out of Geneva, barrier-free trade is a giant philanthropic plan, and multinational corporations are using their soaring shareholder returns and executive salaries only to disguise their real intentions: to heal the world's sick, to raise the minimum wage and to save the trees."

Such smart moments appear throughout Fences and Windows: "In the era of corporate globalization, politics itself is becoming a gated community, with ever more security and brutality required for it to conduct business as usual." Klein's longer essays, especially "Rebellion in Chiapas," about Subcomandante Marcos of the Zapatistas, show the form and style that made No Logo so compelling. Explaining both the history of the movement and the poetry of its ideas, Klein provides Marcos with a worthy tribute leading up his caravan's arrival in Mexico City.

Much of Fences and Windows addresses the IMF and economic matters, issues that Linda McQuaig tackles with greater depth and authority. But only Klein is able and willing to dirty her hands in anarchist squats, public demos, and affinity groups. More importantly, when Klein lectures or writes, people pay attention, in part because she doesn't speak in a Maude Barlow monotone. There is a reason she, but not Ralph Nader, receives backstage passes from Radiohead.

Klein also remains appropriately critical about the movement she chronicles, in a manner that most right-leaning columnists would be hard-pressed to emulate: "The spectacle of displaying a movement is getting confused with the less glamorous business of building one" and "But is this really what we want -- a movement of meeting stalkers, following the trade bureaucrats as if they were the Grateful Dead?"

Most encouraging, Klein offers solutions. In the final essay of Fences and Windows, she first asks us to challenge the promise of globalization versus the reality. Then she urges activists to move away from articulating what the movement is against, and toward what it is for.

Unfortunately, the book ultimately lacks coherence, as Klein is unable to stitch together often disparate articles. Klein, always the environmentalist (every page is ancient forest-friendly) presents us with 90 per cent recycled material, the bulk being her Globe and Mail "Unbranded" columns. These 900 word dispatches from South America and Rome and Quebec City, which Klein admits in the intro were often "dashed off in hotel rooms late at night," trade elevated insight for immediacy. Their impact has diminished over time, the relevancy of many columns as faded as the newsprint they were inked upon.

In December of 1992, Nirvana released Incesticide, a dog's breakfast of B-sides, outtakes, miscellany and rarities designed to stave off impatient fans awaiting the follow-up to Nevermind. Jonathan Poneman, the president of Sub-Pop records, Nirvana's old label, suggested calling the album Cash Cow. I refrain from making a similar suggestion only because Klein is donating part of the Fences and Windows proceeds toward a fund for activist legal defense and popular education.

Why Fences and Windows and why now is a question Klein never answers. This collection of odds and sods is Klein's way of reminding us she still exists, but she's inconsistent in some of her beliefs. She repeatedly attacks smothering copyright and patent developments, and praises the implications of Napster. But if information wants to be free, as she and others have argued, the immediate question is why we're being asked to pay $22.95 for this particular compendium. Could this material not have been posted on the nologo.org website for free?

Klein wants to have her coffee and sip it too. "I don't care what you buy. We tend to boil everything down to a shopping issue," she said in a Maclean's profile in March, 2001. "If I'm in an airport and need a coffee, it's not like I'm not going to have Starbucks."

Many have suggested that Klein has become what she hates, the world's leading anti-globalization brand. This is irony in its dullest and least interesting form. A more accurate label is public intellectual. This collection of essays, neither as well-researched nor as compelling as No Logo, suggests she's halfway there.

Klein's repeated attacks on Adbusters founder Kalle Lasn (a former employer of mine), are also troublesome. Lasn spent eight years and hundreds of thousands of dollars on his magazine before it broke even. Many of his ideas regarding cultural jamming and the mental environment form a huge flank of inspiration for the movement Klein describes. Clearly, Lasn's anti-consumer admonishments bother Klein. He wants to put Starbucks out of business, where Klein wants her coffee and sip it too. "I don't care what you buy. We tend to boil everything down to a shopping issue," she said in a Maclean's profile in March of 2001. "If I'm in an airport and need a coffee, it's not like I'm not going to have Starbucks."