www.thenation.com Posted January 28, 2003 January 28 by Marc Cooper Porto Alegre, Brazil Monday Night

Early tomorrow morning, organizers of this, the third annual World Social Forum, will formally close out the weeklong event to report their conclusions to the hundreds of international reporters gathered here. But this is merely a formality.

Having drawn more than 100,000 participants to scores of panel discussions and more than 1,500 seminars, debates and workshops on globalization and its effects, there will be no firm conclusions, resolutions or marching orders. Merely some consensual ideas and suggestions for how what is known as the global justice movement should move forward. More about those in a moment.

Looking back over this past handful of days, there were several emotional peaks that delegates and participants are bound to remember: Brazil's newly inaugurated socialist President Luiz Ignacio "Lula" Da Silva speaking softly to a local crowd of scores of thousands, his voice catching in emotion as he spoke of hungry children, and then--two days later--again watching Lula via satellite, as he passionately pleaded the plight of the global South to the assembled elites at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. And then there was today's electrifying peace rally in a local indoor stadium packed to the rafters with thousands and awash in flags and banners, brought cheering and chanting to its feet by Indian novelist Arundhati Roy and MIT Professor Noam Chomsky. The stadium crowd then poured into the streets for a spirited and colorful march against the proposed Free Trade Area of the Americas--a joyous, noisy caravan, equal parts political demonstration and Brazilian street carnival.

Indeed, this session of the World Social Forum saw the definitive merger of the global justice and peace movements--an inevitability given the intense Bush Administration press for war in Iraq. Opposition to the war was beyond any debate here. But there are more than a few strategists and activists concerned that the war itself, if and when it comes, and the energies invested in opposing it, will distract from the fight around the more underlying issues of corporate globalization.

On that issue of distraction: There were several sideshows occurring this week that competed for the concentration of the assembled. The most clamorous was that of embattled Venezuelan President Hugo Ch?vez, who flew unexpectedly into town, clearly hoping to use the forum as a high-profile venue to argue his own case (the Venezuelan opposition is now about to enter the third month of a costly economic strike against him). But forum organizers stuck to their principle of not allowing any head of state to formally participate (even President Lula's appearance took place outside the formal structures of the WSF), and Ch?vez was kept out.

The former military officer turned populist president then staged his own show in a different part of town, and 200 journalists who turned up for his press conference were put through an arduous four-hour process of fighting their way in, only to eventually have the long-winded Ch?vez answer a grand total of five softball questions from pre-selected journalists during the hour he appeared. More disconcerting, a group of forum activists who agreed to participate the next day in what was billed as a daylong "independent" inquiry into the activities of the private and very anti-Chavista Venezuelan TV stations were later aghast to learn that one of the organizers of the hearing was himself a paid press "adviser" to the controversial Venezuelan president.

But despite these detours, much good work was accomplished. Marathon closed-door meetings of key activists from around the world hammered out detailed plans for action over the coming months. Networking and alliances were undertaken on just about every possible point on the international social justice agenda, from labor and human rights to the fight against war and militarization, against genetically modified foods and the privatization of water and other services, to defense of the environment.

But the two top issues at the core of the movement will be to stop the planned expansion of authority of the World Trade Organization, as well as the agreement on the Free Trade Area of the Americas. Both these issues will converge this fall with the next WTO ministerial meeting planned for Cancun in September and the FTAA ministerial meeting in Miami two months later. With those targets in their sights, a multinational coalition of NGOs and social movements will be ramping up coordinated campaigns, at once lobbying different national governments on these issues as well as trying to produce as much "street heat" as possible--so look for two more momentous, Seattle-like battles later this year in Cancun and Miami.

All of this year's work at the World Social Forum seemed to float on the still-present euphoria of Lula's landslide election--an event that the prominent Brazilian liberation theologist Frei Betto called "the first and most important ascendancy of the international left since the fall of the Berlin wall." Enhancing that elation was the undeniable sense that the upbeat tone of this year's forum was a sharp contrast to the gloomy atmosphere that pervaded the pro-corporate Davos conference held simultaneously on the other side of the Atlantic. "We can't turn back the wheel of history," said Lula's chief of staff, Jose Dirceu, referring to globalization. "But maybe we can turn it around."

www.rabble.ca by Rici Lake January 28, 2003

History is scattered with the rubble of failed movements for social change. If these mistakes are to be avoided in the future, we must study and learn from these past failures.

With this introduction, Brazilian political columnist Marcio Moreira Alves inaugurated a “round table of controversy” on the question of how to cope with the gaps and tensions between social movements, political parties and political institutions on the third day of the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

While the panellists agreed on several points, notably the importance of maintaining independent social movements, the three-hour debate did not achieve any deep consensus. What remains clear, though, is that the relationship between party politics and movement politics will remain a difficult one.

Louise Beaudoin, Quebec’s Minister of International Affairs, called for a reaffirmation of the role of party politics. “Politics is a place where we can return to building society,” she said. It is the role of the nation-state to provide basic services, distribute wealth, and “put an end to the global apartheid that separates North and South.” But, she said, the role of social movements is also important: “social democratic parties that forget [about social movements] have lost power.”

Willy Madisha, representing the Confederation of South African Trade Unions, offered a critical analysis of the South African experience after eight years of African National Congress (ANC) rule. While the ANC still enjoys much popular support — Madisha estinated that two-thirds of South African electors would vote for the ANC — there is growing dissatisfaction, in large part because of the failure of the ANC either to deal with the country’s dramatic income disparity or to radically restructure government institutions, but also because the ANC in government is no longer the dynamic social movement of opposition.

The transition was hampered from the beginning by the threat of capital flight, Madisha said, a threat which will condition the actions of any progressive government. This limited the ANC`s flexibility, particularly in the economic arena. South Africa remains a relatively wealthy country, but also remains a deeply divided country, second only to Brazil in income disparity.

However, he added, serious mistakes were made by the ANC and South African civil society. In particular, he said, rather than try to maintain active social movements, most of the progressive leadership moved into state roles, with better pay and more access to power, and many social movements simply put their faith into the newly-elected state rather than continue their activities.

This has left a vacuum in the political environment, he said, warning that “we must not sacrifice social movements to build the state.” This is the responsibility of both the progressive governments and the movements themselves: “social movements cannot just aim at getting progressive governments into power,” while the elected progressive governments must themselves work to “open a space for action by mass movements.”

The democratic transition did not instantly change the nature of the South African government, Madisha pointed out. “We inherited a repressive state and its institutions... and we did not move fast enough to reform the state to ensure representation.”

Jose Genoino, president of the Brazilian Workers Party (PT, Partido do Trabalhadores), distinguished between the social movements which helped build the PT, the political party itself, and the new federal government headed by the PT’s Lula da Silva. “The PT is a left-wing party,” he said, but the government of Lula is “more inclusive.” So it is important that the relationship between the government and the party be clear.

Genoino rejected both the “traditional” models: a “Stalinist” party-state and a party which is simply “an annex of the government.” But the third option — that the party be “the opposition” — is also difficult.

For both Genoino and Madisha, there is a necessary if uneasy alliance between social movements and left-wing political parties. “The duty of the social movements is to support progressive action,” said Mahadi, while “the duty of the government is to engage with the social movement... a left-wing government must see social movements as part of the parcel of team players.”

According to Genoino, the radical transformation of Brazil will depend on two simultaneous projects: the reform of the state to make it democratic and participatory, and the transformation of society through political action by “independent and autonomous social movements.” The PT as a political party and the social movements are “friends of the same process.”

Rici Lake is a Canadian activist currently living in Perú where he works for an international NGO. Watch for more rabble in Brazil — voices from Porto Alegre, this week on rabble.

www.pacifica.org ATTN: ALL STATIONS From: Democracy Now! Re: Rundown Date: 01-27-03 PRSS Channel: A67.7

9:00-9:01 Billboard:

Israel considers full reoccupation of Gaza Strip; Weekend raid kills 14 Palestinians and injures dozens

UN weapons inspectors set to ask for more time Iraq: U.S. threatens to go to war alone and unleash massive attack (possibly nuclear) on Iraq

From Porto Allegre to Davos to New York: We hear from activists at the World Social Forum, World Economic Forum and at anti-war protests outside the United Nations

9:01-9:08 Headlines

ISRAEL CONSIDERS FULL REOCCUPATION OF GAZA STRIP; WEEKEND RAID KILLS 14 PALESTIANS AND INJURES DOZENS

Israel is considering fully reoccupying the Gaza Strip. This comes after a massive Sunday invasion of Gaza City that left 14 dead and over 50 injured. In addition Israel locked down the West Bank and Gaza Strip last night and closed all border crossings.

The moves came just days before Israel’s general election on Tuesday. Prime Minister Gen. Ariel Sharon is predicted to defeat the new leader of the Labour Party, Amram Mitzna, who has pledged to withdraw from the Gaza Strip within a year.

Sunday’s invasion of Gaza City marked the deepest raid into Gaza City in the two years of the second intifada. We go Gaza City for a report.

Guest: Kristen Schurr, journalist living in Gaza. She is currently in Gaza City.

9:06-9:07 One Minute Music Break

9:07-9:50: UN WEAPONS INSPECTORS SET TO ASK FOR MORE TIME IN IRAQ: MEANWHILE U.S. THREATENS TO GO TO WAR ALONE AND UNLEASH MASSIVE ATTACK (POSSIBLY NUCLEAR) ON BAGHDAD

At the United Nations today, chief UN weapons inspector Hans Blix is expected to say their work is just getting started and that more time is needed.

Meanwhile Secretary of State Gen. Colin Powell indicated yesterday that it would be useless to give the inspectors more time. Powell made these comments at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. Powell went on to say the U.S. would be willing to wage war against Iraq alone if European nations would not fight. Powell said Washington had a "sovereign right to take military action on Iraq alone or in a coalition of the willing.” He also claimed Iraqi President Saddam Hussein had ties to Al Qaeda but offered no evidence.

Both the United States and key ally Britain could use Monday's report to press for military action against Iraq on the grounds of Baghdad failing to cooperate with the inspectors in line with UN disarmament Resolution 1441.

In other Iraq news, CBS News is reporting that the U.S. is considering to wage an unprecedented bombing campaign against Iraq in the opening days of war if the Bush Administration chooses military action against Iraq.

The military plans to drop between 300 and 400 cruises missiles in the first 24 hours of attack, easily exceeding the total fired over six weeks in the 1991 Gulf war.

The aim is to cause such "shock and awe" that Iraqi troops will lose their will to fight at the outset. Just in case they do not get the message immediately, the US plans do the same again on day two.

And the Los Angeles Times is reporting that Pentagon is quietly preparing for the possible use of nuclear weapons in a war against Iraq.

The military planners have been studying lists of potential targets and considering options, including the possible use of so-called bunker-buster nuclear weapons against deeply buried military targets.

Guest: Phyllis Bennis, fellow at the Institute for Policy Studies in Washington DC, specializing in Middle East and United Nations issues She is the author of the book Before and After: U.S. Foreign Policy and the September 11th Crisis, Lower Third: Institute for Policy Studies

Guest: Andreas Zumach, Geneva-based UN correspondent with the German newspaper Die Tageszeitung. Last month Zumach obtained an unedited copy of Iraq's 12,000-page report to the United Nations, including portions on how Iraq acquired its weapon capability from Germany, the U.S. and others. Lower Third: journalist, Die Tageszeitung

Links: Institute for Policy Studies: www.ips-dc.org

9:20-9:21 One Minute Music Break

9:50-9:58 FROM PORTO ALLEGRE TO DAVOS TO NEW YORK: WE HEAR FROM ACTIVISTS AT THE WORLD SOCIAL FORUM, WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM AND AT ANTI-WAR PROTESTS OUTSIDE THE UNITED NATIONS

Yesterday Brazil Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez lashed out at Venezuelan opposition leaders, predicting they would fail in their bid to oust him from power.

Chavez said, "Our struggle against the terrorists and fascists has further strengthened the will of the Venezuelan people. It is one thing to try to get rid of me, and another thing to succeed. I have the popularity to remain in power."

Chavez’s comments came at the third annual World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, Brazil where up to 100,000 activists and academics from around the world are meeting in Brazil this week.

During Thursday's opening march for the forum, an estimated 30,000 to 40,000 people demonstrated in Porto Alegre.

The World Social Forum is being held as a counterpoint to the World Economic Forum the annual gathering of the world's biggest capitalists and heads of state, taking place simultaneously at the luxury Swiss ski resort of Davos.

One of the few individuals who attended both forums was Brazilian’s new president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva. He addressed the World social forum last Friday among criticisms that his attendance at the World Economic Forum this week would be like as one said“going to a banquet with people responsible for the misery in the world”

Three years ago, Lula had called the WEF the “grand strategic event for neoliberalism”. Over the weekend in Davos he called for rich countries to join his fight to eliminate hunger affecting up to 44 million of Brazil's 175 million citizens.

Meanwhile in New York, hundreds of anti-war protests gathered outside the United Nations to protest war.

Guest: America Bera-Savala, organizer with ATTAC in Sweden. She is in Brazil at the World Social Forum

Guest: Serena Tinari, Indymedia journalist in Davos

Guest: Miles Solay, organizer with Not in Our Name

Link: www.notinourname.net

9:58-9:59 Outro and Credits

For a copy of today’s program, call 1 (800) 881 2359. Our website is www.democracynow.org. Our email address is mail@democracynow.org.

Democracy Now! is produced by Kris Abrams, Mike Burke, Angie Karran, Ana Nogiera and Alex Wolfe. Mike Di Filippo is our engineer and webmaster.

www.rockymountainnews.com By Naomi Koppel, Associated Press January 28, 2003

Corporate leaders at economic forum tackle business ethics

DAVOS, Switzerland - Corporate leaders at the World Economic Forum turned their attention Monday to the official theme of the conference - how to restore public confidence in business.

"We are dealing with this issue head-on," J.T. Battenberg III, chief executive of U.S. auto supplier Delphi, told the forum, an annual meeting of government and business leaders.

The crisis of confidence was brought on by scandals like the collapse of U.S. energy trader Enron. Many at the forum, which has drawn about 2,300 attendees, called for a new commitment to old-fashioned business ethics instead of relying completely on the laws and rules affecting corporate governance.

"We no longer live in a world where business can say, 'Trust us. We'll do it right,' but one where the public will say, 'Show me you'll do it right,' " said Jaap Winter, former legal adviser to Unilever.

"Business must not only do the right thing but be seen to do the right thing," said Winter, who led a group of experts on corporate governance and accounting issues for European Union finance ministers last year.

The official theme of this year's forum is "building trust," but the meetings have been overshadowed by the U.S. threat of war against Iraq.

Business and government leaders at the forum also showed signs that they have moved closer to solving a problem that has threatened to bring global trade negotiations to a halt.

After intensive talks among the heads of pharmaceutical companies, South African trade minister Alec Erwin and other trade officials, there is progress in finding ways to ensure poor countries can afford vital medicines, said Supachai Panitchpakdi, director-general of the World Trade Organization.

"In the last few days I thought (drug companies) have shown the kind of understanding that really we aren't that far apart and we should still be looking for a possible solution," Supachai, who also participated in the talks, told reporters. "What we heard at the meeting was encouraging."

Negotiations on the issue collapsed late last year after the United States refused to agree to a plan that would have let poor countries in certain circumstances override patents and order cheap, generic drugs from foreign companies to treat diseases such as HIV/AIDS, malaria and tuberculosis.

Discussions are due to restart today at the WTO's headquarters in Geneva.

The forum, in the posh Alpine resort of Davos, has been criticized by some activists as putting corporate profit ahead of improvements for the world's poorest people.

But on Sunday, the new leftist president of Brazil, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, expressed hope that the forum can be brought closer to the opposition World Social Forum, where da Silva also spoke before heading to Davos.

"This is like a simple negotiation between a labor unionist and an employer," he said. "Once they sit at the bargaining table, we can see there are many topics that can be improved so we can reach an agreement."

On Sunday, U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell called on the nations of the world to back the Bush administration in a potential war with Iraq.

"History will judge us whether we have the strength, the fortitude and the willingness to take that next step," he said.

Jordan's King Abdullah told the leaders in the next session that there is little chance of avoiding war in Iraq.

"We're a bit too little too late," he said. "Today I think the mechanisms are in place. . . . It would take a miracle to find dialogue and a peaceful solution."

politics.guardian.co.uk George Monbiot Tuesday January 28, 2003 The Guardian

Mr Bush and Mr Blair might have a tougher fight than they anticipated. Not from Saddam Hussein perhaps - although it is still not obvious that they can capture and hold Iraq's cities without major losses - but from an anti-war movement that is beginning to look like nothing the world has seen before.

It's not just that people have begun to gather in great numbers even before a shot has been fired. It's not just that they are doing so without the inducement of conscription or any other direct threat to their welfare. It's not just that there have already been meetings or demonstrations in almost every nation on Earth. It's also that the campaign is being coordinated globally with an unprecedented precision. And the people partly responsible for this are the members of a movement which, even within the past few weeks, the mainstream media has pronounced extinct.

Last year, 40,000 members of the global justice movement gathered at the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil. This year, more than 100,000, from 150 nations, have come - for a meeting! The world has seldom seen such political assemblies since Daniel O'Connell's "monster meetings" in the 1840s.

Far from dying away, our movement has grown bigger than most of us could have guessed. September 11 muffled the protests for a while, but since then they have returned with greater vehemence, everywhere except the US. The last major global demonstration it convened was the rally at the European summit in Barcelona. Some 350,000 activists rose from the dead. They came despite the terrifying response to the marches in June 2001 in Genoa, where the police burst into protesters' dormitories and beat them with truncheons as they lay in their sleeping bags, tortured others in the cells and shot one man dead.

But neither the violent response, nor September 11, nor the indifference of the media have quelled this rising. Ever ready to believe their own story, the newsrooms have interpreted the absence of coverage (by the newsrooms) as an absence of activity. One of our recent discoveries is that we no longer need them. We have our own channels of communication, our own websites and pamphlets and magazines, and those who wish to find us can do so without their help. They can pronounce us dead as often as they like, and we shall, as many times, be resurrected.

The media can be forgiven for expecting us to disappear. In the past, it was hard to sustain global movements of this kind. The socialist international, for example, was famously interrupted by nationalism. When the nations to which the comrades belonged went to war, they forgot their common struggle and took to arms against each other. But now, thanks to the globalisation some members of the movement contest, nationalism is a far weaker force. American citizens are meeting and de bating with Iraqis, even as their countries prepare to go to war. We can no longer be called to heel. Our loyalty is to the principles we defend and to those who share them, irrespective of where they come from.

One of the reasons why the movement appears destined only to grow is that it provides the only major channel through which we can engage with the most critical issues. Climate change, international debt, poverty, the hegemony of the G8 nations, the IMF and the World Bank, the depletion of natural resources, nuclear proliferation and low-level conflict are major themes in the lives of most of the world's people, but minor themes in almost all mainstream political discourse. We are told that the mind-rotting drivel which now fills the pages of the newspapers is a necessary commercial response to the demands of younger readers. This may, to some extent, be true. But here are tens of thousands of young people who have less interest in celebrity culture than George Bush has in Wittgenstein. They have evolved their own scale of values, and re-enfranchised themselves by pursuing what they know to be important. For the great majority of activists - those who live in the poor world - the movement offers the only effective means of reaching people in the richer nations.

We have often been told that the reason we're dead is that we have been overtaken by and subsumed within the anti-war campaign. It would be more accurate to say that the anti-war campaign has, in large part, grown out of the global justice movement. This movement has never recognised a distinction between the power of the rich world's governments and their appointed institutions (the IMF, the World Bank, the World Trade Organisation) to wage economic warfare and the power of the same governments, working through different institutions (the UN security council, Nato) to send in the bombers. Far from competing with our concerns, the impending war has reinforced our determination to tackle the grotesque maldistribution of power which permits a few national governments to assert a global mandate. When the activists leave Porto Alegre tomorrow, they will take home to their 150 nations a new resolve to turn the struggle against the war with Iraq into a contest over the future of the world.

While younger activists are eager to absorb the experience of people like Noam Chomsky, Tariq Ali, Lula, Victor Chavez, Michael Albert and Arundhati Roy, all of whom are speaking in Porto Alegre, our movement is, as yet, more eager than wise, fired by passions we have yet to master. We have yet to understand, despite the police response in Genoa, the mechanical determination of our opponents.

We are still rather too prepared to believe that spectacular marches can change the world. While the splits between the movement's marxists, anarchists and liberals are well-rehearsed, our real division - between the diversalists and the universalists - has, so far, scarcely been explored. Most of the movement believes that the best means of regaining control over political life is through local community action. A smaller faction (to which I belong) believes that this response is insufficient, and that we must seek to create democratically accountable global institutions. The debates have, so far, been muted. But when they emerge, they will be fierce.

For all that, I think most of us have noticed that something has changed, that we are beginning to move on from the playing of games and the staging of parties, that we are coming to develop a more mature analysis, a better grasp of tactics, an understanding of the need for policy. We are, in other words, beginning for the first time to look like a revolutionary movement. We are finding, too, among some of the indebted states of the poor world, a new preparedness to engage with us. In doing so, they speed our maturation: the more we are taken seriously, the more seriously we take ourselves.

Whether we are noticed or not is no longer relevant. We know that, with or without the media's help, we are a gathering force which might one day prove unstoppable.

www.monbiot.com