Europe
photo: Richard Harris
The message of the week on the Charlemagne Building which houses a few European Community directorates. In case you can't read it, the banner says Don't shoot! I am a humanitarian worker.
The message of the week on the Charlemagne Building which houses a few European Community directorates. In case you can't read it, the banner says Don't shoot! I am a humanitarian worker.
Last week there were demonstrations around Europe led by the Union movement to protest austerity measures. A big demonstration was held in Brussels aimed at the EU and 100,000 union members came from all over Europe to attend. It seems like these events are really just an excuse to come to Brussels and party. Traffic gets disrupted, people march and then they hang out drinking Belgian beer and eating Belgian food. This one was no different.
The Daily Show did a bit on it. it seemed to me that they had two minutes to fill. It was amusing as John Stewart usually is, but factually a little off. Now, I don't know if it was from ignorance or on purpose to set up the jokes but Stewart erroneously said that it was 100,000 Belgians demonstrating, and 3 waffle jokes later he also completely misrepresented the cause of the linguistic dispute. That aside, what was fascinating for me was the footage of the various US news reports on the issue that he used. The slant of the reporting was that (just like in the US) people are angry and things are going badly, and the footage purported to being of the Brussels march showed violence that I know didn't happen last week. The event was so humdrum that it barely got covered here. Media manipulation.
The Daily Show did a bit on it. it seemed to me that they had two minutes to fill. It was amusing as John Stewart usually is, but factually a little off. Now, I don't know if it was from ignorance or on purpose to set up the jokes but Stewart erroneously said that it was 100,000 Belgians demonstrating, and 3 waffle jokes later he also completely misrepresented the cause of the linguistic dispute. That aside, what was fascinating for me was the footage of the various US news reports on the issue that he used. The slant of the reporting was that (just like in the US) people are angry and things are going badly, and the footage purported to being of the Brussels march showed violence that I know didn't happen last week. The event was so humdrum that it barely got covered here. Media manipulation.