www.mpa.gr Sao Paolo, 25 January 2003 (15:58 UTC+2)

Brazilian Senator Aloizio Mercantante, a close associate of President Luiz Inacio Lula, met yesterday with Coalition of the Left President Nikos Konstantopoulos and decided to launch a meaningful cooperation between the Brazilian Workers' Party (PT) and Coalition of the Left.

They decided to exchange experience in the unionist struggle, local administration, social movements, and party organization and promotion.

Also, they decided that a cooperation should get underway between the political research and social skepticism institutes of "CAJAMAR" in Brazil and "Nikos Poulantsas" in Greece.

According to information, a PT delegation is likely to visit Greece and participate in the political events that will take place during the Greek EU Presidency.

The Brazilian Senator stated that his government's work is difficult and complex, adding that it is a challenge for the development of a new social and political model.

Mr. Konstantopoulos stated that a great hope for political change is being born in Brazil and this hope needs international solidarity and support.

Mr. Konstantopoulos also had a meeting with Venezuelan Parliament deputy and Andean Countries Parliament President (Venezuela, Colombia, Equador, Peru, and Bolivia) Mrs. Janet Madriz.

www.guardian.co.uk

Anti-capitalist activists gather in Brazil as prospect of war gives fresh impetus to search for alternatives

Hilary Wainwright in Porto Alegre Saturday January 25, 2003 The Guardian

The nearest thing to a people's United Nations, the World Social Forum (WSF), opened yesterday in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre.

For four days the city, whose participatory method of administration has made it the United Nations' model of good government, will be host to more than 100,000 activists for peace and social justice.

The first WSF in 2000 was the brainchild of organisations involved in the anti-capitalist protests of the late 90s; they wanted to develop alternative ways of living.

"Protests are not enough," said Walden Bello, an academic from the Philippines and leading critic of the World Trade Organisation.

The event is held at the same time as the business-led World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, in order to draw attention to the idea that, in the words of the WSF logo, another world is possible.

The choice of Porto Alegre was symbolic too. For 15 years the city's governing Workers party - which now rules Brazil through the leftwing President Luis Inacio Lula da Silva - has been deciding the budget through a process of popular participation, redistributing wealth, reducing poverty and eliminating corruption as a result.

It is the wholehearted involvement of the city administration in the running of the WSF that makes such an extraordinary event possible. The existence of a working experiment in Porto Alegre makes it highly practical for the discussion of participatory democracy, which is - along with social economics and alternatives to war - the main theme of the forum.

"I come to the forum to exchange experiences of democracy," says Alvaro Portillo, who was previously mayor of Montevideo in Uruguay.

The prospect of war has given an added sense of urgency to the search for alternatives.

A sign of this is the growth in participation from the US. In the first two years only a few academics and non-governmental organisations managed to find the funds to travel to Brazil. This year the US has one of the largest non-Latin American delegations, with nearly 2,000 attendees.

"If we are to end war, we need a new kind of globalisation, based on democracy and social justice," says Fred Ascate of the US group Jobs For Justice, which links community and trade union campaigns.

Porto Alegre is bursting at the seams. Every conceivable public space is occupied. Empty warehouses in the dockyards now resound to discussions of subjects such as empire, war and unilateralism, resistance to militarisation and debate on whether the World Trade Organisation can be reformed.

Some of the speakers are well known: Noam Chomsky, Arundhati Roy and Tariq Ali are there, as is the Brazilian president. The embattled leader of Venezuela, Hugo Chavez, will address the event.

But it is no longer solely the big names that draw thousands of people to the forum. "Initially celebrities helped to give the event its legitimacy; now everybody recognises the WSF as the space for global alternatives," Luciano Brunet, one of the organisers, says. "It has a life of its own."

The diversity of the WSF, a hallmark of each of the last three years' events, illustrates that the left may at last have retained the tension of a good debate without the fractious infighting of old.

One of the most central of these debates is the relationship between civil society and political power. President Da Silva, now the embodiment of political power in Brazil, regards this gathering of civil society as an important ally.

After making his speech to the WSF, he is going to its business counterpart in Switzerland. "I will be taking the message of Porto Alegre to Davos," he said. "I will be saying the same thing as I say here. There will not be two faces. I will tell Davos that their economic policies are making a terrible mistake."

www.abs-cbnnews.com

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - If there's a common thread joining the tens of thousands of participants at the World Social Forum, it's globalization, and deep skepticism about what it can do for the good of mankind.

As activists taking part in the forum's opening march Thursday heaped criticism on the International Monetary Fund, Francisco Giuliano was hard-pressed to come up with anything he likes about unfettered U.S.-style capitalism and free trade.

"Globalization has come only to decide how the rich will distribute for their own benefit the cake of our countries," Giuliano said. "This is a globalization made by the haves, by the powerful only."

Organizers have predicted a turnout of 100,000 activists in Porto Alegre for the six-day forum, held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Davos.

At least 2,000 police are on hand to keep order. Military police captain Joao Carlos Gomes said no major disturbances were expected.

With lectures from globalization critics and more than 1,700 seminars and workshops, the six-day forum seeks to change the perceived ills of capitalism, including foreign debt and unfair global trade that favor rich, industrialized nations and multinational corporations.

Some social forum participants are convinced that the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has a genuine chance at improving the lot of millions of impoverished Brazilians — and may even help the rest of South America's poor.

Silva, a former shoeshine boy who dropped out of school to help support his family, will address the social forum Friday.

The next day he will fly to Davos, where he reportedly will call for rich countries to join his fight to eliminate hunger affecting between 24 million to 44 million of Brazil's 175 million citizens.

During Thursday's opening march for the forum, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people demonstrated in Porto Alegre, many waving red flags and jumping into the air as a coarse voice repeated in Portuguese: "No, no, no! Capitalism no! Long live socialism and the revolution!"

Brazilian theater student Camila Catario Fortes said anti-globalization sentiment is increasing because of "negative outcomes of globalization across the world."

Although the concept of opening all countries to free trade and allowing multinational corporations to operate without limits was good, the impact has not been for most of the world's citizens, she said.

"It would have been different had it brought understanding among cultures, it would have been great," she said. "But in practice, it hasn't happened."

Annia Faas, a German writer from Hamburg said globalization was "intrinsically wrong."

"Differences among men are so great. You can barely understand your own neighbor, let alone the world."

For Sergio Gomes, a metalworker from Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial largest city, globalization "is the new name of colonization."

"It means that industrial countries keep the clean industries, like electronics, and force developing countries to work with industries polluting the environment," he said. "They get the best, we are left the worst."

www.sfgate.com HAROLD OLMOS, Associated Press Writer Friday, January 24, 2003

(01-24) 00:17 PST PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil (AP) --

If there's a common thread joining the tens of thousands of participants at the World Social Forum, it's globalization, and deep skepticism about what it can do for the good of mankind.

As activists taking part in the forum's opening march Thursday heaped criticism on the International Monetary Fund, Francisco Giuliano was hard-pressed to come up with anything he likes about unfettered U.S.-style capitalism and free trade.

"Globalization has come only to decide how the rich will distribute for their own benefit the cake of our countries," Giuliano said. "This is a globalization made by the haves, by the powerful only."

Organizers have predicted a turnout of 100,000 activists in Porto Alegre for the six-day forum, held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum taking place simultaneously at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Davos.

At least 2,000 police are on hand to keep order. Military police captain Joao Carlos Gomes said no major disturbances were expected.

With lectures from globalization critics and more than 1,700 seminars and workshops, the six-day forum seeks to change the perceived ills of capitalism, including foreign debt and unfair global trade that favor rich, industrialized nations and multinational corporations.

Some social forum participants are convinced that the new Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, has a genuine chance at improving the lot of millions of impoverished Brazilians -- and may even help the rest of South America's poor.

Silva, a former shoeshine boy who dropped out of school to help support his family, will address the social forum Friday.

The next day he will fly to Davos, where he reportedly will call for rich countries to join his fight to eliminate hunger affecting between 24 million to 44 million of Brazil's 175 million citizens.

During Thursday's opening march for the forum, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people demonstrated in Porto Alegre, many waving red flags and jumping into the air as a coarse voice repeated in Portuguese: "No, no, no! Capitalism no! Long live socialism and the revolution!"

Brazilian theater student Camila Catario Fortes said anti-globalization sentiment is increasing because of "negative outcomes of globalization across the world."

Although the concept of opening all countries to free trade and allowing multinational corporations to operate without limits was good, the impact has not been for most of the world's citizens, she said.

"It would have been different had it brought understanding among cultures, it would have been great," she said. "But in practice, it hasn't happened."

Annia Faas, a German writer from Hamburg said globalization was "intrinsically wrong."

"Differences among men are so great. You can barely understand your own neighbor, let alone the world."

For Sergio Gomes, a metalworker from Sao Paulo, Brazil's industrial largest city, globalization "is the new name of colonization."

"It means that industrial countries keep the clean industries, like electronics, and force developing countries to work with industries polluting the environment," he said. "They get the best, we are left the worst."

www.nytimes.com By TONY SMITH

PÔRTO ALEGRE, Brazil, Jan. 23 — Arriving for last year's World Social Forum here, well before he had been elected president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva was blunt in his criticism of the world's top policy makers then gathering for the World Economic Forum in New York.

"The sheer amount of barbed-wire fencing," he said, showed that "what those men there were thinking was no good for the majority of humankind, especially for the poor." Advertisement

This year, Mr. da Silva will stop here only briefly to address the 100,000 or so antiglobalization activists gathered for the third Social Forum before jetting off to Davos to speak to "those men," now back at their traditional venue in the Swiss Alps, but still behind barbed wire.

The fact that Mr. da Silva is willing to rub shoulders with the Che Guevara T-shirts at the Social Forum and the suits in Davos illustrates the fine line he has been walking since taking office on Jan. 1.

On the one hand, Mr. da Silva, a former metalworker, has appeared on television and on magazine covers as popular "Presidente Lula," the caring leader who takes his cabinet on trips to some of Brazil's poorest regions to show he intends to make good on election promises to redress this vast country's appalling social inequities.

Ditching for a while the suits and ties that helped him win over more reticent, conservative voters during last year's election campaign, Mr. da Silva reverted to his working-class roots, touring shantytowns, embracing an AIDS-afflicted child here, comforting a poverty-stricken widow there.

If the popular reaction is anything to go by, Mr. da Silva is managing to persuade Brazil's poorest that their economic lot can improve. Wherever he goes, Mr. da Silva draws a crowd and he plays it like a rock star.

On the other hand, Mr. da Silva has struck a serious note with the markets, nominating an economic team that is bending over backward to persuade investors that Brazil is a safe bet and that unorthodox policies are simply not on the agenda. Its first major policy decision was to raise interest rates this week to their highest level in nearly four years, assuaging fears the new government would be soft on inflation.

The government is also advancing with plans, long awaited by the markets, to reform Brazil's wasteful public sector pension system, inefficient tax laws and archaic labor legislation.

Maybe because of such ambiguity, Mr. da Silva's announcement he would fly to Davos caused furor among radicals on the left of his Workers' Party. Cândido Grzybowski, a member of the Social Forum's steering committee, called the decision "lamentable."

Mr. da Silva was scheduled to speak here Friday before leaving Saturday for Europe.

"The decision to go to Davos had to be a controversial decision because it was a political decision," said Oded Grajew, a co-founder of the Social Forum and now Mr. da Silva's personal aide for social affairs.

Mr. da Silva "wants to show the world that it is possible to combat poverty and misery with at least the same weight as is being given to the fight against terrorism," Mr. Grajew said.

If Mr. da Silva delivers any antiglobalization message, it will most likely be here rather than in Davos, where he will be trying to persuade the international financiers present to reopen credit lines to Brazilian companies. Hundreds of millions of dollars in financing were cut off before Mr. da Silva's election triumph last October, when many were predicting Brazil's economy would collapse.

Given Mr. da Silva's most recent wooing of the markets, however, even Wall Street analysts say he could get a serious hearing at Davos for Pôrto Alegre's main political idea that for world prosperity, the plight of the poor must be addressed.

"Finally there's someone between those two poles of thought who can absorb both points of view," said John Welch, chief Latin American economist at the New York branch of WestLB, a German bank. "All his political life he's been a good negotiator. Maybe he can pull this one off, too."