Standing room only as Naomi Klein draws big crowds to Helsinki University

[Judi Lynn]

Standing room only as Naomi Klein draws big crowds to Helsinki University

You arrived here at 18:50 Helsinki time Friday 6.6.2008

She’ll be here in a minute.
The 250-seater Metsätalo auditorium is already packed to the aisles, and there are more people milling around in the foyer looking a bit frustrated.
The crowds have turned out to hear Canadian globalisation activist and critic Naomi Klein, in Helsinki to promote the Finnish-language edition of her newest book, The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. The book has already been translated into more than 20 languages.

Since Thursday is one of the days reserved for university entrance examinations, the University of Helsinki’s Political Science Department has not been able to book a venue any larger than this one.
A vain attempt was made earlier by Klein’s host, Professor of World Politics Teivo Teivainen, to rig up a TV screen in the courtyard in order that the overspill throng could follow Klein’s lecture.
Klein shows up only a couple of minutes behind schedule, and enters to a barrage of camera flashguns.

She immediately wins over her audience, and in a half-hour presentation goes through the basic tenets of her book: how economist Milton Friedman and his followers around the world have pushed through their neoliberal agenda when the public in the respective countries have been traumatised by one kind of shock or another, be it Act of God, war, coup, or economic crisis.
Klein charges that the economic shock therapy of free market neoliberalism has also been bolstered by violence, human rights violations, and even torture.
You can practically hear a pin drop.

More:
http://www.hs.fi/english/article/Standing+room+only+as+Naomi+Klein+draws+big+crowds+to+Helsinki+University/1135236954853