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| Sat Nov 15, 2:08 PM ET |
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Thousands of people march through the streets of Paris on the last day of the European Social Forum(AFP/Joel Saget) |
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More pics here: |
Posted on 11/16/2003 5:41:44 AM PST by Stultis
Tens of thousands of opponents of war, discrimination and corporate greed from more than 60 countries paraded through Paris Saturday in a show of grassroots force to Europe's power elite.
Winding up a four-day European Social Forum that drew some 50,000 participants and more than 200 organizations, according to organizers, the marchers blew whistles, sang and played music under the banner of "For a Europe of rights in a war-free world".
The purpose of the ESF was to focus public debate, particularly on the future of Europe as the European Union prepares to expand from 15 to 25 members next May.
Squarely under the lens was the proposed EU constitution, the draft text drawn up under former French president Valery Giscard d'Estaing which aims to increase efficiency in the EU when it admits the 10 new members, mostly former Soviet bloc countries.
The activists see the text as enshrining market principles at the expense of social values and human rights.
The draft itself is not without debate within the EU: Germany and France, the two biggest economies, want it to be adopted without change, before the expansion, while smaller states such as Poland and Spain fear it will unfairly boost larger members' domination of the bloc.
Italy -- which currently holds the rotating EU presidency -- hopes for an agreement by the next EU summit in mid-December.
But for ESF activists, the constitution issue presented a pressing context for hundreds of seminars, round-table discussions and workshops.
Some 55 plenary conferences, 250 seminars and hundreds of workshops were held, with topics including the global economy, war, sexual equality, genetically modified (GM) foods, racism and cultural diversity.
The list of participating non-governmental organizations (NGOs), associations and unions included Amnesty International, Greenpeace and Oxfam, as well as the radical farmers union represented by France's most famous activist, Jose Bove.
Above all, the ESF provided a pluralist, fluid venue for social debate. The appearance of controversial European Muslim scholar Tariq Ramadan at a round-table Saturday morning on religious discrimination was a case in point.
The ESF organizers insisted Ramadan be allowed to participate, despite protests that he had published anti-Semitic remarks.
Ramadan, grandson of the Egyptian Muslim Brotherhood founder Hasan el-Banna, received the session's longest applause after denying he was anti-Semitic and declaring that all forms of religious discrimination must be eliminated. "It is everyone's business," he said.
Police estimated 40,000 marchers demonstrated Saturday, the final day of the ESF which opened Wednesday in Paris and its suburbs. Organizers put the number at 100,000.
Aleida Guevara March, the daughter of Cuba's revolutionary hero Che Guevara, walked the parade route with the Cuban delegation.
"The forum allowed us to pierce a bit the first world's indifference to the suffering of the countries in the third world," she told AFP.
Marchers carried rainbow flags proclaiming "Peace", while many carried signs referring to the Middle East, such as "USA outside the law!" and "Blue helmets (UN peacekeepers) for Palestine!"
On Sunday a group of social movements was set up to propose a calendar of mobilization initiatives on Europe and the draft EU constitution.
On the balance sheet, however, the ESF wound up with a deficit of 100,000 euros (117,650 dollars), said Bernard Pinaud of the Center for Research and Information on Development, a member of the organizing committee.
Organizers said the next ESF would be held in London in the autumn of 2004.
So they're against the only known method of liberating a population from a bloody tyrant? The only route which could have stopped Hitler from taking the globe? The only way to defend one's nation from attack?
They're similarly against Capitalism, an economic model that has expanded the globe's wealth by thousands of percent in the last 200 years, prevented billions from starving, and gives the poor a better standard of living (in America) than 60% of the rest of the world's population?
Their rant against discrimination is simply mis-named. They're really for a system of preferences, which inevitably leads to inequitable treatment from one's own government.
Yep, that's a group to lead Europe into the future!
One step closer to world domination.
Well, only if it's used against a bloody tyrant. War (or murderous insurgency) used against a democracy, a civil society, a liberator, or Jews is perfectly alright. This is clear from many quotes in the Al Jazeera coverage. See:
| European Social Forum looks east (anti-capitalist, anti-war confab in Paris is gaga for intifada) ^ |
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| Posted by Stultis On 11/16/2003 10:04 AM CST with 2 comments Aljazeera ^ | 14 November 2003 | Arthur Neslen European Social Forum looks eastby Arthur Neslen in ParisFriday 14 November 2003 3:43 PM GMT From all over Europe they came, idealists, activists, dreamers and revolutionaries, but their sights were set on events in the Middle East.Iraq and Palestine dominated debate among the 50,000 delegates at the European Social Forum (ESF) in Paris, as the gathering spontaneously caught fire on its second day. “This forum is creating a space for the Palestinian narrative that is not available in the mainstream,” the Palestinian civil society spokesman Mustafa Barghouti told AlJazeera.net. |
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| Sat Nov 15, 2:08 PM ET |
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Thousands of people march through the streets of Paris on the last day of the European Social Forum(AFP/Joel Saget) |
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More pics here: |
| Youth leads French libertarians ^ |
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| Posted by ReleaseTheHounds On 11/16/2003 7:54 AM CST with 18 comments The Washington Times ^ | November 16, 2003 | Delphine Soulas Some conservatives liken Sabine Herold, a 22-year-old student, to Joan of Arc, and others nickname her "Mademoiselle Thatcher" after she took on France's left-wing labor unions this summer. Many in France see her as a symbol of a growing revulsion among young French libertarians against a ruling class that punishes excellence and rewards mediocrity. "A generation of reformers, who can't bear the blocking of the [French] society anymore, is emerging. There will be soon an electoral power of people who really want to change the status quo," said Miss Herold. In March 2001, she co-founded the group Liberté, J'Ecris Ton |
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Well, plans to go to the Indymedia party never got off the ground. After an impromptu jazz band struck up in the canteen marquee at about 9pm it was three hours of dancing on the tables, in the aisles and on the bar.I've never seen spontaneous happiness - hysteria even - among what must have been more than a thousand diners, all started when one table of Italians (I think) started singing socialist anthems after dinner.
[...] This afternoon I caught some of the discussion from an outside overspill debate with Tony Negri, the once imprisoned Italian professor and, to many people, the "godfather" of the anti-globalisation movement (people here are now billing it as the "Autres Globalisation" movement, or translated into English as the "alter gobalisation", which is quite a good slogan, if a little tricky off the tongue.
He raised a massive cheer from the audience when he told how he lead a strike against Alfa Romeo in the early 70s, and eventually "blew up the electricity" to close the factory down.
But he rebuked the crowd immediately, saying this had been a "mistake." Just as many people cheered that too.
Best T-shirt so far? Well, there have been a lot, but I liked the one from the French Marxists, which turned the hammer & sickle into the Nike "swoosh" symbol, with the slogan: "Strike? Just Do It!"
Yahoo
http://search.news.yahoo.com/search/news/?p=%22european+social+forum%22
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