World Social Forum begins in Brazil

asia.cnn.com As many as 100,000 activists expected to attend Thursday, January 23, 2003 Posted: 8:54 PM HKT (1254 GMT)

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) -- Globalization foes were flocking to Brazil for the World Social Forum, the annual protest against the World Economic Forum held simultaneously at a Swiss ski resort.

The six-day event begins Thursday in the far southern city of Porto Alegre. As many as 100,000 activists are expected to attend from countries as diverse as Egypt, India and the United States.

The third annual social forum was featuring Brazil's new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva -- the country's first elected leftist leader who on Friday will become the first government leader ever to personally address the forum. Government officials previously had been excluded.

Silva will then fly to Davos, Switzerland, to participate in the economic forum, which is expected to attract 2,000 business and government leaders.

The landslide election of Silva, a former radical union leader, in October was seen as a rejection of the free-market policies of his predecessor Fernando Henrique Cardoso.

Social forum participants say their opposition to unfettered American-style capitalism should strike a responsive chord this year. The summit follows a year of unprecedented business scandals involving multinational corporations, many of them with headquarters in the United States.

"Washington always preaches to the developing world about eliminating corruption and the rule of law," said Mark Weisbrot, an economist who co-directs the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, D.C. "Here you see the United States has experienced corruption that is worse than anything in developing countries."

Variety of themes up for discussion

Participants will crowd into a soccer stadium and Porto Alegre's Catholic University for hundreds of panel discussions, debates and seminars on themes ranging from corporate misdeeds to the Third World's foreign debt.

They can also dance at a concert by Brazilian pop superstar Jorge Ben Jor, attend Japanese Noh theater presentations or even see a drag queen show.

Prominent activists attending the forum include actor Danny Glover, anarchist and linguistics professor Noam Chomsky and Aleida Guevara, the daughter of legendary guerrilla leader Ernesto "Che" Guevara.

French anti-globalization activist Jose Bove said Wednesday he had no plans to create disruption as he did at the first forum in 2001 -- when he led the invasion and occupation of a farm owned by U.S. agribusiness giant Monsanto. Brazil made him leave the country.

Bove, a farmer who became famous in 1999 when he and nine others used farm equipment to dismantle a French McDonald's under construction, said there's no need now that Silva is in power.

"Things have changed in Brazil," he said.

Activists also are using the forum as a way to draw media attention to their opposition to a possible U.S.-led war against Iraq.

People at the economic forum in Davos should take notice because the world economy will suffer if President Bush decides to attack, said Rainer Rilling, a German social sciences professor with the Berlin-based Rosa Luxembourg Foundation. "We hope a war can still be avoided."