[WSIS CS-Plenary] WSIS: Secret police, hunger and booze. The aftermath of a world summit

[Jean-Louis FULLSACK]

Bonjour Ralf
and many thanks for this "piece of journalistic anthology", especially for all those of us who weren't able to actually experience these events there.
Friendly
Jean-Louis Fullsack.
recouldn't 





> Message du 23/11/05 23:56
> De : "Ralf Bendrath" 
> A : "wsis-cs-plenary" 
> Copie à : 
> Objet : [WSIS CS-Plenary] WSIS: Secret police, hunger and booze. The aftermath of a world summit
> 
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> _______________________________________
> 
> Here's a nice, light-hearted report from a reporter's perspective on WSIS. 
> I've copied the first paragraphs below. I especially like the phrase 
> "Conference World - where human existence is put on hold". :-)
> 
> Best, Ralf
> 
> -------------------
> 
> http://www.theregister.co.uk/2005/11/20/wsis_blog_five/
> 
> WSIS: Secret police, hunger and booze. The aftermath of a world summit
> 
> By Kieren McCarthy in Tunis
> Published Sunday 20th November 2005 22:00 GMT
> 
> Secret policemen: you miss 'em when they're gone. It seems most people 
> shipped out of Tunis soon after the closing ceremony ended around 7pm. 
> When I got back to my hotel around 10pm, there was only one secret 
> policeman standing guard and he didn't even bother to inspect my badge.
> 
> This morning, I only saw one who idly came to check out why a lunatic 
> Englishman was in the swimming pool. To Tunisians, the weather is almost 
> unbearably cold. To me, it feels like a cool spot during the summer. 
> Besides that swimming pool had been mocking me for a week. Unless I was 
> willing to get up at 5am or go for a midnight dip, I haven't had a chance 
> to get near it since the conference opened.
> 
> These aren't proper secret police anyway, mere security. And I hope to God 
> the real ones weren't the men pretending to be journalists in the press 
> centre this week either. If they were, the Tunisians really have very 
> little to be afraid of. If MI5, say, were to decide to infiltrate a news 
> organisation, it would train the people up, make em at least able to 
> appear to do the job. Instead, Tunisian secret police appear to have come 
> direct from Tunisian secret police training school.
> 
> Pre-requisite skills are the ability to wear a cheap suit badly, sit for 
> hours on end not doing anything except showing indirect interest in the 
> loudest and quietest people in any room, and to forget to maintain your 
> cover when outside of the immediate area.
> 
> I asked one, in French, what he was working on, just for a laugh. He just 
> mumbled some in Arabic and stared at the keyboard as if willing it to 
> start typing something.
> 
> Conference World - where human existence is put on hold
> 
> That you can start to enjoy the fact people are being paid to spy on you 
> is a clear sign that you have entered Conference World™ - a self-contained 
> microcosm of madness where even the most ridiculous things become accepted 
> as normal.
> 
> (...)
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