| Patrice Riemens on Tue, 28 Jan 2003 19:41:27 +0100 (CET) |
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| <nettime> [fwd: Davos WEF, (No-)Live Report, part 2] |
(from the INURA list) ----- Forwarded message from "r.wolff" <[email protected]> ----- Date: Tue, 28 Jan 2003 09:54:29 +0100 From: "r.wolff" <[email protected]> Subject: Davos WEF, (No-)Live Report, part 2 Friends, back in Zurich after a successful meeting with UNESCO (more about this in Berlin, in July), I had to realise I hadn't missed much. Most protesters never ever made it to Davos. They either got stuck halfway in the train or were re-directed by (dis-)organizers to other locations, like Landquart (on the way between Davos and Zurich) or even Berne. Some people, perhaps one thousand, made it to Davos and had a rather calm day up there. Others protested in Landquart, and towards the evening many re-grouped in Berne, where there was a demonstration on the main square in front of the Bundeshaus (government and parliament building) plus some demolishing of windows. In hindsight, the general feeling among protesters is frustration. Either because they never made it to Davos (even though it would have been possible) or because they were (rightly or wrongly?) re-directed to Berne or ... Most notable: The left is totally split, blaming each other for mis-behaving, disorganizing, etc. The arguments are whether or not one should have accepted the police controls, which degree of controls was acceptable (like going through the checkpoints), if and how one should have denounced any form of militancy, whether it was right to re-direct protesters to Berne, and so on. Social democrats, the Greens, trade unions and autonomous groups are infighting (haven't we had that before?). The police are happy, the WEF is probably happy too. Davos is happy. Nothing much happened, no one took notice. It was interesting to look at the international press when we were in Paris. Hardly any news in any of the big papers of Germany, France, Italy, Britain. No headlines, no frontpages, perhaps a sentence in an article about Lula on page 5 or so. Imagine press coverage if there had been riots. I suppose there is more to say about Porto Alegre. Over and out. Richard W. -- _______________________ Richard Wolff, Dr. sc. nat. ETH INURA Z�rich Institut Hardturmstr. 261 CH-8005 Z�rich _______________________ ++41 (0)1 563 86 91 [email protected] http://www.inura.org/izi.htm International Network for Urban Research and Action ----- End forwarded message ----- # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets # more info: [email protected] and "info nettime-l" in the msg body # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: [email protected]