www.upi.com By Carmen Gentile UPI Latin America Correspondent From the International Desk Published 2/4/2003 5:28 PM

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 4 (UPI) -- Brazil's Landless Workers Movement, armed with scythes and sticks, blocked a major highway Tuesday in the country's northeast and is holding a state secretary of agriculture hostage.

Known locally as the MST, Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra, an estimated 500 protesters calling for widespread agrarian reform in the state of Alagoas, have been refusing to let traffic pass since Monday.

Specifically, officials in the MST -- the world's largest land reform group -- are calling on representatives of the National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform, or INCRA, to make available land for distribution among its ranks and are asking for guarantees regarding access to water and electricity.

The economic divide between the South American nation's wealthy and poor is one of the greatest in the world, particularly in the impoverished northeast, where a great portion of private lands are held by a relative few.

The MST often organizes and carries out seizures of private land to draw attention to their cause and have asked the Brazilian government to introduce wide-scale agrarian reform.

"We want a solution for this calamitous state," said local MST leader Jose Marcone Alves, adding that the protest was an effort to bring national attention to the slow pace of negotiations with INCRA.

The movement calls for a restructuring of Brazilian land ownership in a country where the MST claims 60 percent of Brazil's farmland remains unused, while 25 million peasants toil as landless laborers.

The previous Brazilian government claimed that during its eight-year tenure -- the time of President Fernando Henrique Cardoso's administration -- it had allocated some 20 million hectares to landless workers.

The MST widely disputes that figure.

Meanwhile, State Secretary of Agriculture Reinaldo Falcao -- along with five other state officials -- are being held by the MST blocking the Alagoas highway, although they are reportedly in no danger and are working toward ending the siege.

"We came to intervene in negotiations between the MST and INCRA, but we are impeded from leaving," Falcao said Tuesday in a phone interview with Folha de Sao Paulo newspaper.

The highway siege is the first large-scale action by the MST since the Jan. 1 inauguration of Brazil's new, leftist leader, President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva.

The MST had stated publicly up until Monday that they would maintain an informal truce with the Brazil government in an effort to allow Lula an opportunity to show that he is committed to agrarian reform.

The former union leader and labor-rights activist campaigned on a platform to work toward allocating under-utilized land to those Brazilians seeking to establish their own farms.

During his visits to the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, and the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, Lula took the opportunity to stress the need for agrarian reform in Brazil.

"We now have an administration with the political will to resolve social problems," national MST leader Joao Stedile said last month in Porto Alegre, expressing optimism about the prospects for reform during Lula's tenure in office.

He maintained, however, that the MST would continue to pressure the Brazilian government to resolve the agrarian issue and "organize the workers, the poor, and the people to fight for their rights."

www.prospect.org By Benjamin Lessing Web Exclusive: 2.4.03

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL -- The third meeting of the World Social Forum -- a gathering of the tribes of international civil society that is meant to steal the thunder from the World Economic Forum, which met last week in Davos, Switzerland -- ended as it began, with an exuberant, if not exactly focused, march through the streets of Porto Alegre. Banners and flags proclaimed everything from "War in Iraq Not!" and "Stop the Monster Sharon" to "Give Bolivia Back Its Gas" and "Lesbians Against Free Trade," while three sound trucks more or less bracketing the procession offered the marchers a kind of Battle of the Latin American Protest Songs. As with the march that opened the forum, the official raison d'être was to voice opposition to an invasion of Iraq and to the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas. But as with everything at the forum, it ended up becoming an omnibus measure: In Porto Alegre, everybody got a chance to shout.

Life at the forum was frantic. There were conferences, panels, roundtables, testimonials, workshops, rallies and teach-ins -- and they all happened at the same time. The sheer volume of events forced the casual observer to make some difficult, even surreal choices: Would it be a testimonial by Anita Guevara, Che's daughter, or Hollywood sidekick-cum-social activist Danny Glover? Biodance for a New Humanity or Capoeira (a Brazilian martial art) as Social Protest? A visit to a Landless Workers' Movement collective farm or an hour-long guided meditation at the Galactic Peace Tent? The offerings never failed to surprise: A Basque delegation, openly opposed to the Basque National Liberation Movement's armed campaign, headed up a conference on drug legalization ("War on Drugs Not!"), while an indigenous peoples' rights group instigated an impromptu streaking session when the police prohibited them from bathing au natural. Meanwhile, even the big-name speakers occasionally had their talks interrupted by the odd drum-wielding procession passing by the doors of their conference rooms. At times, the chorus of divergent messages -- there were more than 100,000 participants -- got confusing, dissonant or even schizophrenic, but it never came to blows, and the non-self-consciously diverse tableau that the forum presented was, even to this jaded reporter, moving.

Jaded, in part, because of forums past. Last year, for example, as a result of a clerical error/grave misunderstanding, I got signed up for a mettle-testing, 24-hour Rio-to-Porto Alegre bus ride with the Brazilian Communist Youth League. I thought I was catching a ride with the Rio State University bus; the communists thought I was Brazilian. By the time we realized our mistake, it was too late. "If anybody asks," my sole friend on the bus warned me, "just say you are Canadian or something. These guys hate Americans." She wasn't kidding: They'd brought a whole portfolio of graphic picket signs depicting a devil-horned George W. Bush in various poses -- sinking a knife into a bleeding Palestine, puffing clouds of black smoke from a cigar that was actually a rolled-up Kyoto Protocol and violating a prostrate and buxom South America tied up in ropes that read "ALCA" (the Latin American abbreviation for the Free Trade Area of the Americas). When at one point I overheard the organizers telling the rank and file that they had to be on the lookout for spies and quislings, I realized that my infiltration of the bus was a paranoid leftist's dream come true. The truth would never convince them: I was no spy, no agent of imperialism; I was just a poor schmuck too cheap to buy my own bus ticket. Things got a little tense around the three-hour mark, as word got around of my nationality, but then some forward-thinking soul at the back of the bus lit up a joint. Guitars and bongos were taken up, and differences were set aside.

This was as good a prelude as any to what lay in store at the first two World Social Forums and, to a lesser extent, this year's. Though meant to be an incubator of new ideas, and occasionally successful as such, the forum is also, inevitably, a kind of museum of the left. All the exotic species are here: Maoists, Trotskyites, crypto-Stalinists and, if one's T-shirt is any indication of political alignment, a vast army of Che Guevarists. Indeed, all things Cuban are permanently fashionable among this crowd, as were -- this year anyway -- the Venezuelan flag and Hugo Chávez memorabilia. (Chávez actually showed up on Sunday for a few hours to soak up the sympathy.) Vladimir Lenin and Antonio Gramschi are always popular bets, too, though the Joseph Stalin shirts that were on sale last year have happily been taken off the market.

Indeed, though there are still enough radicals around to make a Prospect-style progressive feel like a member of The Heritage Foundation, the overall tone of the forum has shifted -- fewer scripted cries of protest and more constructive criticism, less defense and more offense. Along with the Stalin T-shirts went the enormous anti-United States billboard that graced the entrance to the forum in 2002, as well as some of the less comforting displays of Yankiphobia -- compulsive U.S. flag burning, for example -- that plagued the first two forums. Perhaps that had to do with a much larger Yankee presence this time around. In the forum's first year, there were very few Americans -- 50 or 60 at most -- representing only a handful of organizations. This year there were probably more than 500; the nonprofit group Jobs for Justice alone brought 130 delegates, including representatives of the AFL-CIO and other labor groups.

I'm not just cheering for the home team here. At a time when most foreign media portray us all as willing and eager proponents of an abusive, imperious and exploitative invasion of Iraq, the presence of real, live Americans who are active critics of our domestic and international politics was of inestimable importance. Kevin Danaher of Global Exchange, during a conference called "Voices from the U.S. Against the War," made a stirring speech, concluding, "Many of us stood up against our own government, risking our jobs, our welfare, even our physical safety, to stand in solidarity with many of you, when your countries were under the control of dictators who had U.S. government support. Now we need you to stand in solidarity with us, as we stand up to a dictatorial government bent on war." He received an overwhelming ovation, and days later I was still hearing Brazilians say that they never thought this kind of opposition exists in the States. Of course, watching the Democrats in Congress, why would you? Still, those Americans who attended the forum made it just a little harder to demonize us. And, who knows, they may have actually laid the groundwork for a real international anti-war coalition.

But a more fundamental reason for the new optimism surrounding the forum is entirely native: This past year's total inversion of Brazil's political landscape. At the first and second forums, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva aka Lula was present as the perennial, losing candidate of the radical opposition. It was here in 2001 that I first saw Lula speak -- and was first impressed by his ability to talk nuanced, practical policy positions to small groups of professionals and emotional, popular politics to large crowds. Now president, he has lost none of his ability to stir emotions: On Friday night he addressed 70,000 people at a lakeside amphitheater, striding up and down the stage with mike in hand -- something hard to imagine Bush pulling off -- and left them roaring in applause. Explaining why he had decided to venture into the wolves' den of Davos, where he would rub shoulders with the likes of Bill Gates and George Soros, Lula promised to bring to the captains of international capitalism what he called the "Porto Alegre message." "Instead of spending billions of dollars on war, we should seek peace, and use our energy and money to end inequality, misery and hunger!" he proclaimed. Lula thus distilled in a single sentence what is perhaps the essence of the international left, and for a moment the crowd, for all its multiple ethnicities, nationalities, party lines and affiliations, was brought together by the astonishing reality before them: One of their own was president of Brazil, and he had not -- so far, at least -- sold out.

This turning of the tide was evident as well in this year's appearance by forum top-draw Noam Chomsky. His message was uncharacteristically optimistic: Davos is shrouded in gloom over corporate scandals and lack of trust in leaders while Porto Alegre is basking in Lula's victory and the downfall of neoliberalism in Argentina. The near-universal opposition to a war in Iraq has won over a few brave leaders such as Germany's Gerhard Schröder and France's Jacques Chirac, and it continues to raise the political cost of warmongering for Bush and Britain's Tony Blair. But while Chomsky got in a few deft jabs at the establishment and neoliberal economics, he never really went for Bush's jugular. Perhaps he didn't need to. As Indian author Arundathi Roy put it in her mellifluous address, which followed Chomsky's and benefited substantially by comparison with the professor's arid monotone, though "the empire" (American power, that is) has not been stopped, it has been forced to show its true colors. Once a nation has declared it official doctrine to maintain "overwhelming superiority of force" by preemptively attacking anyone who might one day conceivably pose a threat, clever, crafty analysis of establishment rhetoric becomes unnecessary. Bush's imperialism speaks for itself.

Despite Chomsky's tepid remarks and his rhetorical efforts to undermine his own popularity -- he couches his best lines in an irony too deadpan to clear the language barrier -- he saw his unlikely elevation to rock-star status completed at this year's forum. In 2002 things got ugly when the hall he was to speak in became dangerously overcrowded and event organizers secreted him away to an empty room nearby. Just before Chomsky's talk was to begin, officials announced to the expectant crowd that, for technical reasons, the speech would be presented via closed-circuit TV -- a would-be fait accompli but for the consent of the crowd, which organizers forgot to manufacture. Furious spectators trashed one of the projection screens and shouted down the public-address system with cries of "Hypocrites!" and "Injustícia!". Lesson learned, this year Chomsky was booked at a small soccer stadium, where he was greeted by nearly 20,000 eager fans wearing simultaneous translation headsets and doing the wave. This mass appeal is, I think, indicative of Chomsky's role to many on the left as a grand intellectual father figure, a philosophical Poo-bah. He provides leftist critics with arguments that, though they may not be constructive or even sincere, are immensely gratifying. There is a kind of "nyah-nyah" schoolyard smugness to them: One feels he has tripped up foes in a web of logical contradictions, even if those contradictions are the result of a deliberate, selective literal-mindedness.

But where would the left be without big ideas? I myself, after a few days of wading through the forum's offerings, realized that I had been unconsciously in search of an answer to what I see as the central question of modern liberalism: What grand theory will replace the radical "free market" anti-Keynesianism that has ruled the economic roost for the past 20 years? I attended several symposia on a post-neoliberal world theme, listening to the likes of Tariq Ali, Alexander Buzgalin and a host of others deliver perfectly adequate critiques of the neoliberal model. However, when it came to naming a replacement, they had little to offer besides good, old European social democracy. Now don't get me wrong, European social democracy is just fine with me. I also happen to like quaint European cafés -- but the former is as much a solution to the problems of neoliberalism as the latter is a solution to the problem of Starbucks. Maybe I am asking too much of dedicated, sincere and successful social activists, but the fact remains: I have yet to find my Poo-bah.

But if the forum did not exactly produce any breakthroughs in theoretical economics, it did provide some truly first-rate mingling. Thirty thousand of the participants were delegates from one or another civil-society organization, and during the 200 or so workshops that filled up their afternoons, countless contacts were made, future protests planned and proposals, manifestos, letters and statements drafted. Moreover, a host of regional meetings and professional congresses, such as the African Social Forum, Urban Planners in Solidarity and the International Harm Reduction Movement, were important in their own right. If the worldwide march against the war in Iraq on Feb.15 or the protest against the World Trade Organization's ministerial conference in Cancún, Mexico, this September are successful, it will have been in large part because of the organizing done in Porto Alegre.

In forums past, I felt that indulging the drive to be overly inclusive compromised the effectiveness of these workshops. Inconsistent and sometimes contradictory proposals were grouped together to avoid telling anyone that they were wrong. In 2001, I was part of a workshop on genetically modified organisms (GMOs), which are currently banned in Brazil (though Monsanto, a biotechnology multinational, is fighting hard to change that). At one point, our group statement, which sought to reflect the ideas of all those present, advocated both research on GMOs to determine negative side effects -- Monsanto's own results not to be trusted -- and the destruction of all GMO plants in Brazil. A friend in the food security workshop had a similar experience, saying: "First they say they want to stop all food imports, then they want to finance substitutes through exports. It's just not economically feasible." But the fact was that these people didn't want to hear why their ideas, their demands, were economically infeasible. They had heard it all before. This was their chance to not be contradicted by know-it-all economists, to have their cries heard and appreciated without critique. And in that lay the secret purpose of the first forum: to create a world where righteous action still had some place, and to find some way out of the predetermined prisoner's dilemma of neoliberal economics. The problem is that in order to do this, you have to banish all economic and logical rigor, not to mention reality.

Indeed, the first forum was referred to in the media and even by then-Brazilian President Fernando Henrique Cardoso as "the Anti-Davos," and this negative self-definition was reflected in its oppositional and aggressive tone. (When George Soros agreed to participate in a Davos-Porto Alegre summit via satellite, he ended up getting called a "blood-stained monster" by Madres de Plaza de Mayo leader Hebe de Bonafini.) Whether it was Lula's victory, the larger pool of participants or simply the maturity of a gathering that seems to be coming into its own, this year's atmosphere was more cooperative, more creative and, by my lights, more realistic. No longer anti-Davos -- how can you be "anti" when Lula, your bearded hero, is there making the case for a worldwide fund against hunger? -- the forum was simply Porto Alegre. The city itself, an industrious, handsome inland capital, greeted the first and second forums with a fair amount of skepticism. But it opened its arms this year, with "Peace" and "Justice" signs hung even in the windows of mall boutiques; "Goodbye, Forum, We'll Miss You," read one billboard. The event moves to India next year. So you have to wonder: At World Social Forum IV, will everybody be wearing Mohandas Gandhi T-shirts?

Benjamin Lessing is a writer living in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

www.upi.com By Carmen Gentile UPI Latin America Correspondent From the International Desk Published 2/5/2003 4:58 PM

SAO PAULO, Brazil, Feb. 5 (UPI) -- The leader of Brazil's ruling party is considering a public smear campaign as punishment for the senator that did not back the Workers' Party choice for Senate leader, touching off a feud among its ranks, Brazilian newspapers reported Wednesday.

Jose Genoino, president of the Workers' Party, or PT, said he might use an unspecified public warning condemning Sen. Heloisa Helena for not attending Saturday's session in which the Senate elected former Brazilian president, now senator, Jose Sarney as the upper house leader.

"Senator Heloisa Helena is irritating the PT by constantly criticizing the party's decisions," said Genoino, who didn't specify exactly how he would further criticize the senator.

The vote was part of a pre-arranged agreement between the PT leadership and Sarney's Democratic Movement Party, or PMDB, whereby the PT would throw its support behind Sarney in exchange for PMDB votes in lower house presidential elections.

True to their word, the PMDB backed the pre-ordained PT choice for lower house president, Rep. Joao Paulo Cunha.

According to Genoino, the Helena's decision to not vote for Sarney went beyond defiance by a member of the PT's "radical faction," which has questioned some of the political maneuvers made by its leadership since President Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva assumed office on Jan. 1.

Mostly, the radicals have been critical of Lula's economic team, which has won the kudos of both local and foreign investors for not deviating from the free market policies implemented by former President Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

They insist that Minster of Finance Antonio Palocci and Central Bank President Henrique Meirelles have been far too conservative for the leftist PT.

The public condemnation of Helena is part of a strategy by the Lula administration to isolate the radicals and prompt them to toe the party line as it attempts to push its agenda of social reforms in Congress and pull Brazil out of its current economic slump.

The PT needs the support of the highly influential PMDB if it hopes to achieve any of its professed goals in the next four years. A further splintering of the PT would surely jeopardize Lula's agenda and undermine efforts at economic recovery.

Helena, however, defended her absence in Saturday's vote saying she has notified party leaders she would not attend the session and that her decision was a just one, as she could not support a "representative of the oligarchy," referring to Sarney.

"Every day I know that am not alone (in my decisions)," said Helena referring to her fellow PT radicals. "I have the conviction to help better this wonderful country."

www.techcentralstation.com Saturday, 08 February, 2003 07:18:03 PM By James Pinkerton 02/04/2003

In the wake of the Columbia tragedy, the arguments of the pro-space constituency are strong, but not strong enough. If space advocates can't bring themselves to make the most powerful arguments of all—that space is vital to human freedom, even to human survival—then their cause will falter as the soaring spirit of heroism and martyrdom fades, and as the counter-arguments of the cost-benefiting, bean-counting critics gain footing.

To be sure, the weekend was a time for both paying tribute to lost astronauts and offering exhortation for future astronautics. Space, said Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.) on "Meet the Press" on Sunday, is "important to us as Americans and as adventurers." Declared Sally Ride, the first American woman in space, to Fox News, "We must push back the frontiers of knowledge." And, most poignantly, first-American-to-orbit-the-earth John Glenn told CNN, "I'd go back tomorrow if I could." For the time being, those pro-space affirmations—oftentimes couched in such solemn language as, "The greatest tribute to the men and women of Columbia would be to carry on their work"—will dominate the debate.

But already, the skeptics and faultfinders are being heard. Here, for example, is a report from Sunday's Manchester Guardian: "Fears of a catastrophic shuttle accident were raised last summer with the White House by a former NASA engineer who pleaded for a presidential order to halt all further shuttle flights until safety issues had been addressed." And here's a headline atop a cutting article in the new Time magazine: "The Space Shuttle Must Be Stopped: It's costly, outmoded, impractical and, as we've learned again, deadly." Soon enough, more details and anecdotes—true or not—will come dribbling out, depicting reckless errors and fatal mistakes. Indeed, one can half-expect a report from France to proclaim that the "accident" was staged by the Pentagon at the direct order of President George W. Bush.

Then will come war on Iraq, and the whole controversy—naysayer and yeasayer alike—will be swept out of the headlines for months, if not forever. And what will emerge at the other end of the investigation, after the bombs stop dropping down on Baghdad—and after the reportorial bombshells stop bursting at NASA headquarters? Most likely, a discredited and shriveled piloted space program. Why? Because the glory of the Columbia crew will have to be shared with a new cohort of battlefield heroes, and the budget for future space missions will have been reallocated to other needs, from the Pentagon to prescription drugs. Yes, space will always have its advocates. But just as during the Vietnam War, today, during the Terror/Iraq War, the immediate demand for guns abroad and butter at home will surely crowd out the more abstract claims of the spacefaring future.

To be sure, space will not be entirely neglected. The U.S. military will surely continue its exo-atmospheric expansion. And a good thing, too; much of America's dominance depends on satellite communication and surveillance. And someday, maybe sooner than we think, America will put heavy weapons into orbit. But generals and admirals can do their war-work in space without putting men and women into space.

So what's the real case for space—space for people?

It's two-fold. First, in the long run, we will need space to be free. Second, we will need space to survive as a species. Freedom and survival: that's putting the hay down where the horse can get it. And that's what needs to be said, sooner rather than later—sooner, before it's too late.

Freedom? We need space for freedom? Aren't we fighting a war for freedom right now? Aren't we sure to win against Saddam Hussein and, one way or another, Osama Bin Laden? Most likely, we will prevail, big time. But that doesn't mean that the bad guys won't get off a lucky shot—a lucky weapon-of-mass-destruction shot. And if they do, then homeland security, from national ID cards to computer snoopers, will come down upon us and our civil liberties like an iron fist. And few will protest. To be sure, the crisis mode might ease up after awhile, but the lesson of big government is that once it gets big, it stays big.

Moreover, the world itself is getting smaller, and that's not good for the don't-tread-on-me ethos. President Bush came in as the sworn enemy of Clinton-era world-government projects, such as the International Criminal Court and the Kyoto agreement, but now, two years later, there's less discontinuity and more continuity between the presidencies than many Republicans might like to admit. Confronted with the need to maintain and strengthen his anti-terror/anti-"axis of evil" alliances, the President announced last year that he would rejoin the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization. And he, or at least his administration, seems committed to an emerging "Kyoto Lite" system. And of course, building and rebuilding other countries—and curing them of AIDS—is not only expensive, but inherently multilateral. In the meantime, even organizations that most TechCentralStationeers probably endorse, such as the North American Free Trade Agreement and the World Trade Organization, all chip away a bit at American sovereignty.

And this is a Republican president we're talking about. What will happen under a future Democratic president? In the same way that the elder and younger Bush are known as "41" and "43," what if former president Bill Clinton is someday remembered as "42," and Hillary Rodham Clinton is known as "44"? Maybe we'll be spared that particular political fate. But just as government gets bigger here at home, no matter who's in charge, so government around the world will get bigger, too. Eventually, inevitably, superstates at home and abroad will start crowding us. And yet the physical world we live in stays the same size, offering no escape. A few years ago, many libertarians thought that the Internet would be a kind of Ayn-Randian refuge, but the regulators and tax collectors are now corralling that freezone. Here's a prediction: every year for the rest of our lives, the world will be knitted together a bit more closely, by this or that international agreement. Worrisome? Sure. Preventable? Probably not. It seems self-evident that if the earth is of a fixed size and the government is equally fixed in its Parkinson's Law-like growth pattern, then freedom will be crowded out.

So what's the answer? One word: space. In the past, Europeans could find freedom by coming to America, and Americans could find freedom by heading out west. But that frontier is long closed. And from now until the end of time, the feds will be closing in, looking for more things to regulate and red-tape. Freedom-lovers will resist, but if the past is any guide, the freedom-dislikers—most politicians and all bureaucrats, environmentalists, and egalitarians—will win more fights than they lose. That doesn't mean that America is destined to become another Maoist China; most likely, America in a globalized world will drift toward the global mean—which is to say, a condition of considerably less freedom than we have now.

But if Americans could travel, physically and permanently, to space—even if just to the moon, as in Robert Heinlein's libertarian classic, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress—then prospects for the survival of maximum human freedom would be greatly enhanced. Those who don't mind being niggled and nitpicked by the state could stay right here, but the mere existence of an exit-option for freedom-ophiles would serve as a check on the checkers.

Historically, the only way that the slow bureaucratic creep of government is reversed is through revolution or war. And that could happen. But there's a problem: the next American revolution won't be fought with muskets. It could well be waged with proliferated wonder-weapons. That is, about the time that American yeopersons decide to resist the encroachment of the United Nations, or the European Union—or the United States government—the level of destructive power in a future conflict could remove the choice expressed by Patrick Henry in his ringing cry, "Give me liberty, or give me death." The next big war could kill everybody, free and unfree alike.

Which leads to the second argument. Spaceship earth may not be as fragile as a space shuttle, but it's still fragile. By all means, let's have homeland defense and missile defense. But let's also get real. If the weapons get bigger, and the planet stays the same size, then prospects for human survival shrink accordingly. For the time being, North Korea seems to have gotten away with breaking out of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. Kim Jong Il's arsenal could be eliminated in the future, of course, but in the meantime, the atomic cat is out of the nuclear bag.

Writing in the February 3 Weekly Standard, Henry Sokolski, director of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center in Washington D.C., offers up scenarios for the spread of nuclear weapons that are much more compelling than the scenarios for their unspreading. Countries such as Iran, Syria, Egypt, Turkey, Algeria, Taiwan, South Korea, and Japan, he writes, have all flirted with the idea of building atomic weapons. And one could add to Sokolski's list other countries, such as Brazil, where the new president, Lula da Silva, seems to be forming an axis of anti-Americanism with the likes of Venezuela and Cuba.

Meanwhile, every one of those potential proliferators could be brought into line, and we'd still face the problem of "super-empowered individuals." Yup, the prospect of Moore's Law—computer power doubles every 18 months—affects cyber-geek and terror-creep alike. Such computational capacity is inherently "dual use" —the ultimate double-edged sword, hanging over all of us, to be wielded by some of us. As technofuturist Ray Kurzweil predicts, "We'll see 1,000 times more technological progress in the 21st century than we saw in the 20th." Most of that progress will be to the good, but not all. What could a hacker-terrorist alliance come up with, weapon-wise? There's only one way to find out.

Sooner or later, Moore's Law will meet Murphy's Law, and we'll realize just how vulnerable we all are, six billion souls, crowded into a narrow band of soil, stone, air and water, hugging the flimsy, filmy, easy-to-rub-off surface of the earth. Let's hope that before we have that rendezvous with deathly destiny, we've had the foresight to build an escape ladder for ourselves.

Some pro-space pragmatists will say that the American public, preoccupied with shuttle heroes, Saddam Hussein, and the stock market, is not going to be interested in long-term arguments about the future of freedom—even the future of human survival. Better, those alleged pragmatists will assert, to simply make once again the traditional arguments about the positive scientific and psychic spinoffs of space travel.

Those arguments are fine, as far as they go. But they don't go far, at least not far enough. That is, the "Tang and Teflon" argument, which lost much of its force three decades ago, is not going to recreate a strong pro-space constituency simply because it is repeated with renewed fervor. The ghosts of seven dead space-heroes may summon spaceniks back into space, but more risk-averse Americans will question the cost.

The people of this country—and of the world—need to be told the truth. And here's the truth: if we don't create an off-earth option in the relatively near future, we risk not only our liberty, but also our lives. The sooner the United States declares its independence from these 50 geographic states, proclaiming instead that our sacred honor should flourish everywhere, on and off the earth, the better for all earthlings. America may be the last best hope for mankind, but the emphasis should always be on the "best," not the "last."

www.rabble.ca by Judy Rebick February 3, 2003

“Another world is not only possible, she is on her way,” Indian writer Arundhati Roy told a massive crowd of 30,000 at the concluding event of the World Social Forum last week in Porto Alegre, Brazil. “On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing.”

I, too, heard her breathing this week, not in quiet, but in the boisterous noise of 100,000 activists talking, chanting, clapping, dancing, discussing and listening to each other’s stories.

At this year’s World Social Forum (WSF), it became clear to me that the Forum is really a process more than a product. The WSF has given us a new way of talking to each other, a new way of sharing our experiences and the impact is extraordinary. On so many levels, the space and the spirit of the WSF has created multiple dialogues that may very well promote transformation. The WSF is realizing a century old dream of an “International,” a gathering of the workers of the world that Karl Marx and Frederick Engels called for in the Communist Manifesto. But instead of the Euro-centric elites of the previous Internationals, the World Social Forum is a meeting of peoples of the world, inclusive, non-sectarian and open.

An organizer of the Asian Social Forum whom I met on my first night in Porto Alegre told me how magical that meeting of 20,000 activists was, “The Indian left is really very sour and negative,” he said, “but here we had fun over those few days as well as engaging in serious political discussions. People thought it was wonderful.” It was the same word I heard from many participants in the first event of the Toronto Social Forum, “wonderful.” Here are some dialogues that the WSF has facilitated:

Israel and Palestine

As Israeli Prime Minister Ariel Sharon consolidated his greatest electoral victory yet, Israelis and Palestinian peace activists met in Porto Alegre to develop a joint declaration for peace. It was read in English by both a Palestinian Member of Parliament and a Jewish doctor to the same throng addressed later by Roy and Noam Chomsky. It read in part, “We Israeli and Palestinian peace activists are determined to pursue peace…an end to the Occupation, the establishment of a Palestinian state, Jerusalem as an open city and a just and fair solution of the Palestinian refugee problem.”

As the Mayor of Porto Alegre read the statement in Portuguese, John Lennon’s song “Imagine” was heard first softly and then at full volume over the giant stadium’s loud speakers. Spontaneously 20,000 people stood, held hands high and swayed and sang along. On the stage, the Israelis and Palestinians too held hands and then hugged and kissed each other. “You may say that I’m a dreamer,” says the song, “but I’m not the only one.”

Political Parties and Social Movements

The day before, José Genoino, president of the Workers’ Party (PT) of Brazil and Willy Madisha, president of COSATU (the union federation in South Africa) explained two sides of taking state power in an extraordinary dialogue on political parties and social movements. Genoino told the crowd, “The challenge of the left is to be an affirmative alternative to authoritarian exclusion, commodification of life and objectification of people.” He continued that the priorities of the PT were democracy as a fundamental value and the struggle for rights. “We walk on two feet, “ he explained. “One foot is the democratization of the state and the other the building of strong autonomous social movements.”

Madisha drew the lessons of the quick and heartbreaking slide to the right of the African National Congress (ANC) in South Africa. “When the ANC was elected, we thought the road ahead would be easy.” The ANC went from being a liberation movement to a traditional party that is only interested in winning elections in such a short time. “It is simplistic to blame the ANC leaders since a similar fate has met almost every left-wing government that has won power.” Here are the lessons he drew:

• All of our militants went into government because we believed that we could make all the changes we needed through the state. We dealt a mortal blow to our social movements and this has had grave consequences.
• South Africa is second only to Brazil in the gap between rich and poor. The ANC thought they could use the state to redistribute wealth, but they quickly succumbed to the pressures of capital. The first step of any left-wing government must be to restructure the state to include participation of ordinary people at all levels of government.
• We in COSATU relied on our informal relations with our comrades in the ANC. We should have structured a formal relationship of accountability.

He warned the PT that the real fight begins once the new government takes over. I was struck by how closely these lessons resembled those many of us drew from the Bob Rae/NDP government experience in Ontario.

Trade Unions and Social Movements

One of the more amazing personal experiences I had was to facilitate two discussions among the world’s trade union activists and leaders. Last year, some women unionists from Canada were disappointed that male leaders making long speeches denouncing neo-liberalism dominated the union sessions. So they joined with the Brazilian, Argentinian and Italian labour federations to organize two round tables with me as moderator keeping every one to no more than three minutes each.

There were amazing stories like the one from Jonathan Neal from Globalize Resistance in England. Globalize Resistance invited the two top left-wing journalists in Britain as speakers, and then leafleted the newspapers and the TV stations for a meeting. Seventy journalists showed up and were challenged to take the fight against the war into their newsrooms and into their editorial boards. One result was that the Daily Mirror, a tabloid, has taken an anti-war stance and will publish a five-page supplement for the massive anti-war marches planned throughout Europe on February 15 including maps on how to get to the march. On a recent cover, the paper cleverly highlighted the connection between war and oil.

But most important was the sophistication of the discussion based not on bombastic interventions or debating resolutions but rather on sharing experiences and discussing strategies. Everyone loved it and wanted to find ways to continue the dialogue.

Canada and Quebec

The spirit of the WSF even touched one of our most difficult questions, the relationship between the left in Canada and in Quebec. We held two meetings to discuss launching a Canada/Quebec Social Forum. As someone who has worked on building these links for more than twenty years, I can say that these were the meetings with the least tensions across our divide that I have ever seen. There was a consensus to move forward on a Quebec-Canada and, hopefully, First Nations Social Forum with a start-up committee being formed to issue an appeal to the groups who were not at the WSF.

Activists from Quebec, Canada, the United States and Mexico also persuaded the Vancouver group that has been pushing for a North American Social Forum in August of 2003 that it was not realistic in the short time frame they had planned.

Lula and the PT

At the centre of the magic was the new world that Lula and the PT are trying to build in Brazil. We saw more than a glimpse of it. On the last day, in the giant stadium, a man freaked out and started smashing sound equipment. The big security guards, instead of subduing him with violence, comforted him. They held him and patted his head and his back, speaking kindly to him. They physically stopped his destruction but with kindness instead of violence. He began to cry and left voluntarily with them.

As the Forum wrapped up, we were all seized with how much there is to do to “Confront the Empire,” as the final event put it. Promoting the process, ideas and practices of the World Social Forum and the New Brazil is central on the agenda. Canadians discussed the idea of building meetings with leaders of the PT government to spread their ideas and practices to a broader audience. There was a lot of focus on organizing against the FTAA and the war on Iraq, which were certainly the two most prominent issues. Supporting the efforts of activists in India to organize the next World Social Forum, in addition to spreading the forum throughout Canada and Quebec, were other priorities.

Laying Seige to the Empire

I end as I began with the words of Arundathi Roy. After outlining a series of victories, including of course Lula’s election, she said:

“…We may not have stopped it (Empire) in its tracks, but we have stripped it down. We have made it drop its mask. We have forced it into the open. It now stands before us on the world’s stage in all its brutish, iniquitous nakedness. Empire may well go to war, but it’s out in the open now — too ugly to behold its own reflection. To ugly even to rally its own people.

“We can turn the war on Iraq into a fishbowl of the U.S. government’s excesses. We can expose George Bush and Tony Blair and their allies for the cowardly baby killers, water poisoners and pusillanimous, long-distance bombers that they are.

“We can re-invent civil disobedience in a million different ways…becoming a collective pain in the ass.

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness…The corporate revolution will collapse if we refuse to buy what they are selling — their ideas, their version of history, their wars, their weapons and their notion of inevitability.”

“Remember this. We be many and they be few. They need us more than we need them.”