Brave, crusading, iconoclastic Guardian correspondent Matthew Tempest is striking out against the evil, right-wing, corporate-media conspiracy that is actively suppressing the truth:
It’s an unthinking, immutable truth for the mainstream media that young people are not interested in politics.
So, if they were permitted to read about it, many of that media’s consumers/readers would be surprised to learn that today something like 60,000 mostly twentysomething people from all over Europe will gather in Paris, unpaid, in their own time…
No-one is permitted to read about this. It is unclean. It is seditious. It is dangerous propoganda and, I swear, if you even cast your eyes over so much as a single sentence of it, your door will be knocked down and you will be dragged away by the jackbooted goons of the Bushista-Berlusconi-Murdoch Mind-Control Reich and subjected to continuous loops of Fox News until your eyeballs explode.
…to sit through four days, 10 hours a day, of..
Nose-picking, navel-gazing and self-abuse.
…lectures, seminars and talks on politics.
Same thing.
And it’s not just any old politics. The topics are largely esoteric, complex and abstract…
Translation:a load of incontinent, incomprehensible drivel.
Until today, the ESF had almost no coverage in the mainstream British media.
Well, what do you expect? Nobody dare speak of such things, lest they be ‘eliminated’ by the all-seeing, all-knowing, omnipotent Zionist-Corporate-Illuminati World Control Machine.
The event is the European Social Forum…
No kidding?!!
The ESF (slogan: A Europe of Rights and a World Without War) is, admittedly, a tricky topic to cover. Fascinating as the planned speeches and seminars may be, it doesn’t translate easily into “hold the front page” breaking news.
Oh I don’t know. Surely all it takes is a little imagination. Let’s see, here is the itinerary which includes “Sustainable methods of production and consumption, ecology and preservation of the ecosystem”. Need to translate that into a tabloid headline? Easy. “Save the Bamboo Forests, Start Eating Pandas.”
No (immediate) changes to the world will be visible by Sunday, when it closes.
And no changes to underwear will be visible any time this decade.
With that in mind, this reporter will be filing a daily weblog, chronicling the events as they happen, who I talk to, bump in to, and, not least, how well I sleep at the “crash accommodation” – a so far undisclosed gymnasium floor somewhere in Paris.
Er, Matthew, I get this distinct feeling that you’re going to be bedding down in a ‘so far undisclosed’ shop doorway.
First of all, though, is the Eurostar, and a train journey I’m looking forward to.
At least he will be able to get some sleep.
Instead, there will be 300 of us commandeering a carriage or two, with political theorist and global justice guru George “Moonbat” Monbiot (that’s the nickname his rightwing critics give him) giving a lecture on the train…
CONDUCTOR: “Tickets, please?”
MONBIOT: “Do you realise that, by demanding a ticket from me, you are, in fact, acting as the unwitting pawn of the global capitalist conspiracy to exploit the underprivileged and suppress the democratic rights of the world’s native peoples?”
CONDUCTOR: “Oh they’re right. You are a Moonbat.”
…before a hip-hop act takes over for an impromptu gig under the Channel.
So ‘impromptu’ that it has been meticulously planned in advance.
Revealing that I’m reporting on the event for the Guardian is on a “don’t ask, don’t tell” basis, for fear of being lynched for the sins of my colleagues. That’s a slight exaggeration, but for the reasons just stated, many of the activists regard the mainstream media, even (or especially) the Guardian and Independent, according to the Noam Chomsky doctrine – as a safety valve by which the state-corporate nexus maintains its stranglehold on information through the existence of a fringe “liberal” media.
Oh my gosh, the Guardian and the Independent are both in on it, too. They are mere tools of the Right-wing-Bush-Hitler-Corporate-Nazi Programme of Social Control and Dissent Crushing.
STOP. DO NOT READ THIS ARTICLE. DO NOT FOLLOW ANY OF THE LINKS. IT IS ILLEGAL. YOU WILL BE CAUGHT AND YOU WILL BE PUNISHED.
Oops, I read the article. Where do I go for reindoctrination?
God, that’s depressing. These people are just SO 1970s.
All that’s missing is a “be-in” or some such nonsense.
Ow! I read the article, too. I feel fifty IQ points stupider.
“The role of a solidarity-based economy”, indeed!
The boys will be there to pick up girls. God only knows why the girls go.
Maybe, in these circles, the girls also go to pick up girls.
[When these people start acting like adults, I will refer to them as “men” and “women.” Not before.]
Kim – I imagine the place will packed full of wussified men, don’t you?
I wish these little twits would hold one of these convocations in a Third World location, like Yemen or Guatemala or Belle Glade, Florida.
Ah the “yoof” of today, particularly soft-brained…
“Hey, everyone’s entitiled to the BBC’s (or Guardian/Independent’s) opinnion….”
Yeah, these forums get major coverage in France. Problem is, most of the target audience can’t really fly all the way to Porto Allegre in Brazil at taxpayers’ expense like the wealthies of the Socialist Party. So they figured they should have a local version. After all, there are enough leftist crackpots in Paris to make this a success.
I just wonder how much it costs to join this free show for the masses. Yes, they do charge…Bashing capitalist pigs is, after all, a lucrative business. Ask Michael Moore.
Oh sweet Jesus, don’t send them to Florida…just knowing they were in my state, let alone country would be enough to send me into homicidal convulsions. Honestly…the guy tries to play up this wonderful Tranzi “event” as something spontaneous and creative, when he lets it slip that everything is rote and choreographed down to the finest detail (neglecting of course the minor detail of where all these thousands of perepetually indignant leftovers of the 60’s are going to take a piss.) Really, why do they even NEED a conference? they all agree with each other, if not on a few tiny minutae, then on their goals as a whole. Not to skew off point, but its ridculous how homogenous lefty opinion is, the politics of some Lackey of ANSWER are more or less the same as someone from Greenpeace, the only difference between the two is what aspect of western civilization infuriates them more. God, at least rightists still have some internal dynamics…I would love to see the results of an equal number of technolibertarians and Buchaninites in the same locked room…
Where are those suicide bombers when you need them ?
Matt W,
I gather from young master Tempest’s need for professional anonymity that the modern left is NOT, in fact, all that homogenous. Apparently, we are to believe that the anti-globalisation tendency crowd considers those bibles of Brit P-C, the Guadrian and the Independent, to be on the wrong side in the Great Struggle. Well, to my eye the aforesaid bibles clearly represent a vast and essentially marxisant caucus inhabiting academia and much of the civil service, amongst other significant areas of British national life. How bloody depressing that 60,000 shiny-faced idealists apparently don’t think this sort of poison in European society goes nearly far enough.
David, Funny, funny fisk. He forgot to mention whether Yoko Ono would be attending. I thought they might least rise to Bianca Jagger, but I see she’s got a gig over in London against President Bush’s visit. So much intensity, so little time.
My favourite part so far is his MEP friend’s theory that Bush ‘pressurised’ the Mexicans. What purpose compacted Central Americans would serve is left to the reader’s imagination.