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April Fools Stories

imc-uk features | 01.04.2004 01:21 | May Day 2004

April 1st: Several spoof stories appeared across the Indymedia network on April Fools Day. Here the story was "Mayday Cancelled! Tony Blair's government has decided to ban the 1st of May..."

Other April Fools spoof stories included George W. Bush and Richard Cheney resigning, Corsica becoming a huge EU Deportation Centre, a global coalition of anti-GE activists preparing a hostile take-over of Monsanto under the slogan "Don't hate the corporations, buy them!", and reports that Indymedia.org ltd was in merger talks with the CBS/Viacom News Network.

MAYDAY CANCELLED!

Surprise Government Announcement! Quite literally, this year, there will be no Mayday.

In a surprise announcement, Tony Blair's government has decided to ban the 1st of May. April will have 31 days as opposed to the usual 30 and May will formally start on the 2nd. During the hurridly convened press conference last night the Prime Minister said, "Due to recent protests, demonstrations and marches disrupting the center of London and the City on May 1st by anti-globalisation activists and unions, we have decided to do away with the day and hopefully it will be just like any other working day" The Home Office will be sending out instructions to all businesses to adjust their calendars accordingly and has banned all marches to do with Mayday - as there won't be one. The unions, who will be hit hard by this, have yet to respond, but a government spokeswoman said "I'm sure they will understand the reasons for this measure". George Bush has fully backed the proposal saying he would "take up the idea and run away with it."

This was, of course, an APRIL FOOL... Don't believe the media, be Indymedia


See Also:

Bush & Cheney Resign!
Washington- Last night’s surprise announcement from the Whitehouse that both George W. Bush and Richard Cheney are stepping down from office sent Washington wags into a tailspin of confusion and controversy. Both Republican leaders have been under fire recently for mishandling of the so-called War on Terrorism and their actions with regard to the 9/11 tragedy

Taking over Monsanto: Biotech IMC
Under the slogan "Don't hate the corporations, buy them!" a global coalition of anti-GE activists has decided on a new strategy in campaigning against genetic engineering and is preparing for a hostile take-over of Monsanto, the world's biggest producer of GE crops...

Corsica becomes EU Deportation Centre
Last weekend in Bruxelles, the EU foreign ministered pushed repression against migrants and other foreigners further in their effort to build Fort Europe. In an effort to control migrants, it was decided to use the island Corsica in the Mediterranian Sea as a central deportation centre by 2005.

Indymedia.org team in merger talks with CBS/Viacom
George Soros, CEO of Indymedia.org ltd has begun merger talks with the CBS/Viacom News Network to help bring together the Vibrant Staff of the Independant News Network with the resources and Global Consumer Reach of the CBS news network. This follows a meeting of the IMC Board of Directors and key Indymedia shareholders where it was decided that Indymedia needed to branch out from its traditional Liberal readership demographic to encompass more mainstream news interests and readerships....

Passionate Tellings of Truth...

It has been brought to our attention that some of the "facts" in the above stories may not represent the exact truth in all particular details. However, we have decided to leave them here for a little longer to see whether we can find out the truth. We will archive them in keeping with our commitments to Open Publishing (plus, if any of these things ever happen, we'll be ready).

Or as John Cleese, Minister of Silly walks put it: "A really good idea is always traceable back quite a long way, often to a not very good idea which sparked off another idea that was only slightly better, which somebody else misunderstood in such a way that they then said something which was really rather interesting."

imc-uk features

Comments

Hide the following 15 comments

Never loose your sence of humor

01.04.2004 08:39

as much as i enjoy humor and i think there sould be a bit more of it on indymedia. I just have one question. Who has the right to call themselves IMC-UK. as far as i am aware it goes against the whole princible of indymedia and that not even the editoral collective should call themselves that. Sorry but it just pisses me off

Turnip


hey turnip

01.04.2004 08:56

quite right, it should of course say "imcuk features", it makes no sense to say imcuk :-)

swede


Get a grip

01.04.2004 09:05

Foobar!

Dante


Rights

01.04.2004 09:59

What egomaniac has the right to call themselves Turnip. Are they speaking for
all of those root vegetables. I am only writing after getting consensus with
a bunch of cabbages. I happen to know kohl rabbi that are also in agreement etc etc.

Brocolli


Who can be imc-uk?

01.04.2004 10:23

Well I think some people can call themselves imcuk over others if they put in time and effort to help maintain and develop indymedia united kollectives. To do this one has to engage with those others who do this and carry them with you in what you do. That is how network keeps togeather.

The network is open but it does have a boundary even if that can be fuzzy of those involved and those not.

sb


Biotech story brilliant!

01.04.2004 10:40

That Monsanto one is funniest thing I've seen for ages! The Indymedia / CBS is pretty cool too.

Who's up for an april fools day parade next year?

A few years ago in 2000 a news release was sent to the media stating that the 15th annual New York City April Fool's Day Parade was scheduled to begin at noon on 59th Street and would proceed down to Fifth Avenue. According to the release, floats in the parade would include a "Beat 'em, Bust 'em, Book 'em" float created by the New York, Los Angeles, and Seattle police departments. This float would portray "themes of brutality, corruption and incompetence." A "Where's Mars?" float, reportedly built at a cost of $10 billion, would portray missed Mars missions. CNN and the Fox news affiliate WNYW sent television news crews to cover the parade. They arrived at 59th Street at noon only to discover that there was no sign of a parade, at which point the reporters realized they had been hoaxed.

Lirpa Loof


Not so funny April 1st Story

01.04.2004 11:19

A few yrs ago on april fools day the uk press went bonkers over a massive raid by riot police. See this from the ace Squall:  http://www.squall.co.uk

April 01 - THERES A RIOT GOING ON
'You've paid your taxes, so where are the police?' queries a Tory election poster.

Well, on Saturday March 31, two hundred of them were gathered on a small side street in south London, clocking up the overtime pay and preparing to raid an entirely empty building. The old button Factory in Brixton had been a squatted venue for several months, hosting benefit gigs for a variety of causes ranging from homelessness to anti-racism. A low price café opened on Wednesday evenings, a place to eat and stay warm if you didn't have much money. Everybody could come in whether a street homeless person or an undercover cop. Nobody was vetted before entry, nobody excluded.

The benefit gigs, when they occurred, were run by volunteers but no one lived in the run down building. An eviction order had already been granted against the unspecified occupiers, so it was only a short matter of time before bailiffs turned up to take possession and seal the doorways. It wouldn't have been difficult for undercover police officers to determine the nature of what was going on in the place, or that the building was unoccupied most of the time, or that it had an eviction order hanging over it and could have been sealed up at any time.

According to police, however, the Button Factory was a training centre for Mayday rioters. So in an exaggerated drama at dawn, the Metropolitan Police invited two right wing newspapers along and went crashing through the building with a mechanical bulldozer and 200 pairs of boots. The presence of photographers and journalists from the Sunday Times and Sunday Telegraph was further evidence of a media/police complicity which has reached new heights of ludicrousness and new depths of distortion in the run up to Mayday 2001.

The two right wing broadsheets published their reports on April fool's day. "Anarchist base destroyed in dawn raid," triumphed the Sunday Telegraph. "Police raid May Day riot HQ," affirmed the Sunday Times. However, despite being briefed by the same police press office, the Times and Telegraph still managed to concoct conflicting reportage.

"Two hundred police officers" [Sun Telegraph] or "One hundred and 50 officers" [Times] prevented a riot training weekend to be attended by "500 rioters" [Telegraph] or "100 anti-capitalists" [Times].

Perhaps one explanation for these wild inaccuracies lies in the nature of police intelligence; certainly a confirmed misnomer in this case. For we are told by the Telegraph that Special Branch officers had conducted surveillance on the building and 'discovered' that it was to be a riot HQ (whatever that means). We were further told by the Sunday Times that MI5 oversaw the operation.

What was not explained in the articles was how this Special Branch/MI5 surveillance team had not determined that no one lived in the building and that no one was there at the time of the raid. Two hundred Metropolitan Police officers were uselessly deployed at a time when the lack of police officers is - if you believe the Tory party poster campaign and the plaintive police themselves - a real problem. But the gargantuan waste of police resources did not end there.

Since this bizarre dawn raid, the mainstream media went into frenzy; fueled by incessant briefings and press releases from the Metropolitan Police. SQUALL has been informed by several mainstream journalists that senior Met Police officers have been briefing newspaper editorial and senior journalists every few days. In consequence, wild assertions and unsubstantiated accusations have resonated, rebounded, bounced and spewed from TV, radio and newspapers on a daily basis. Even the Observer - considered slightly more liberal among the mainstream media establishment - cavorted on about activists with a supply of samurai swords. London's Evening Standard carried hysterical headlines on a daily basis, one day leading with the bizarre assertion that UK rioters were being trained in US camps and the next day printing a photo of a so called 'dangerous activist' with a superimposed white ice hockey mask. The type of mask worn by Eminem for his nasty, chain-saw wielding stage alter ego Slim Shady, and by the ghouls in the film Halloween.

All pretence at impartiality has been unashamedly abandoned in a zeitgeist self-parody. The mainstream media apparently not embarrassed to display such an obvious lack of integrity, ethics and professionalism. And the news pouring out of Scotland Yard on a daily basis, and regurgitated verbatim in the mainstream media, is quite categorical: 'All anti-capitalist activists on the Mayday demonstration will be violent thugs with an arsenal of weapons. So stay away if you don't think you're hard enough cos we're gonna knock the daylights outta the lotta ya..... justified by our own self-invented pretext."

The media are having their riot before Mayday. And the police? Well they will be determined to show that the £millions spent on pre-event propaganda, and the thousands of man-hours spent before and during he Mayday demonstration was not wasted. And that means cracking heads.

All Fools Go!


More...

01.04.2004 12:38

The Daily Mail has a photograph of the Queen with a copy of Racing Post outside a Windsor bookies William Hill before putting a bet on the Grand National.

The Independent says Brian Eno is writing a new theme tune for The Archers.

The Times reports the release of details from the National Archives about British plans to use a chicken-powered nuclear bomb during the Cold War.

A full-page advert in The Guardian showcases BMW's technology to allow drivers can now cook their dinners from their car as they drive home from work. The advert for "SHEF technology" says it uses satellite technology to link controls in the car to the driver's oven in their kitchen at home. An "oven-cam" on the car dashboard shows how dinner is doing....  http://www.anewwaytocook.co.uk/shef/index.htm

...in reality people can cook things like fish wrapped in tin foil and placed on their engines while on a journey:
 http://weber.ucsd.edu/~mruben/cooking.html
 http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0375751408/102-4423427-9089702?v=glance

daftness


Even Dafter...

01.04.2004 12:42


The Sun championed the plight of the plucky motorist with its report that said that Thames Valley police are fitting hawks with cameras in an effort to catch speeding drivers. The report says that the birds will swoop on drivers who have been spotted by their police handlers...

The Metro claims it's launching a broadsheet version, saying it "will differentiate us further from papers such as The Times and Independent, and offer a new choice for Britain's young, urban professionals".


silly


I'm just waiting for the mainstream press to pick up these stories

01.04.2004 14:27

from indymedia, report them as fact on a day that isn't April 1st, and then things will get really surreal...

heather


NYC Indymedia Joins in the Fun

01.04.2004 15:50

Y'all across the pond have inspired us. Read the feature on NY-Indymedia today: "NYPD to Build Protest Pen Around Manhattan Island"

 http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/90482/index.php

god this is a stress relief! viva indymedia!!

NY IMCista
- Homepage: http://nyc.indymedia.org/feature/display/90482/index.php


NOT A SERIOUS NEWS SITE THEN ?

02.04.2004 19:43

im not so sure this is a good idea. after all, we're not SUN readers, who read newspapers for trivial entertainment, but serious active campaigners or at least, concerned citizens.
in particlar, coming after the story that the anarchists and independent socialists had called off THEIR mayday protest, this is highly confusing; frankly, the "joke" and the "news" are clashing, and now i dont know what to believe.
i daresay that for all their idiocies, the SWP and other "trots", would never have done this kind of thing in their papaers or websites.

serious


Damn right!

05.04.2004 14:01

The SWP and the Socialist Worker would never print such spoof stories and certainly would never support people who promote this style of lampooning or spoofing, indeed would also not support the principle of this IndyMedia thing ie allowing people to control the means of media production - far from it - all communications must go through the Central Committee.



AB1


SWP blah blah blah SWP blah blah SWP

06.04.2004 13:49

You lot are obsessed! (Is Socialist Worker is full of discussions about IndyMedia? It'd be well funny if it is!)

-


No

06.04.2004 18:50

...but you've got to admit they're a joke!
:-)

hohoho


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