Fwd: article by walden bello / focus on trade

[Claudia Westermann]

just thought it might be of interest:

there are more articles online at:
http://focusweb.org

the following article is supposed to be online, but the link is broken ...


>PORTO ALEGRE SOCIAL SUMMIT SETS STAGE FOR
>COUNTEROFFENSIVE AGAINST GLOBALIZATION
>By Walden Bello*
>
>Porto Alegre is not exactly a Third World city.  Located in one of Brazil's
>more prosperous states, Rio Grande do Sul, and populated by people
>mainly of European stock, this city of 1.2 million people is First World
>when it comes to infrastructure and social services.  In fact, it ranks near
>the very top in terms of the country's "quality of life" index.
>
>"ANOTHER WORLD IS POSSIBLE"
>Yet Porto Alegre, site of the World Social Forum (WSF) last year and
>again this year, has become the byword for the spirit of the burgeoning
>movement against corporate-driven globalization.  Galvanized by the
>slogan "Another world is possible," some 70,000 people are expected
>to flock to this coastal city from January 30 to February 4.  This figure is
>nearly six times that for last year.
>
>Fisherfolk from India, farmers from East Africa, trade unionists from
>Thailand, indigenous people from Central America will be among those
>making their way to Porto Alegre.  But there will also be a sizable
>contingent of people from the Northern countries.  And the place will be
>graced by personalities who have come to exemplify the diversity of the
>movement against corporate-driven globalization-among others,
>activist-thinker Noam Chomsky, Indian physicist-feminist Vandana
>Shiva, Canadian people's advocate Maude Barlow, and Egyptian
>intellectual Samir Amin.
>
>COUNTERPOINT TO DAVOS
>The World Social Forum emerged as a counterpoint to the World
>Economic Forum, the annual gathering of the global corporate crowd in
>Davos, Switzerland.  Proposed by a coalition of Brazilian civil society
>organizations and the Workers Party that controls both Porto Alegre and
>the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the idea triggered strong international
>support from organization such as the French monthly Le Monde
>Diplomatique and Attac, an influential Europe-wide organization
>supporting a tax on global financial transactions, and received financial
>support from progressive donors like Novib, the Netherlands
>Organization for International Development Cooperation.
>
>Driven by this energy, the first WSF was put together in a record time of
>eight months.
>
>A televised trans-Atlantic debate between representatives of the WSF
>and some luminaries attending the WEF was billed by the Financial
>Times as a collision between two planets, that of the global superrich
>and that of the vast marginalized masses.  The most memorable
>moment of that confrontation came when Hebe de Bonafini, a
>representative of the Argentine human rights organization Madres de la
>Plaza de Mayo, shouted at financier George Soros across the Atlantic
>divide:  "Mr. Soros, you are a hypocrite.  How many children's deaths
>are you responsible for."
>
>Since its first meeting the stock of the WSF has risen while that of the
>WEF has fallen. "Already put on the defensive as a gathering to
>'discuss how to maintain hegemony over the rest of us," as one of the
>debaters on the WSF side put it, the WEF received a further blow when it
>was forced to hold its 2002 meeting away from Davos since the Swiss
>government could no longer guarantee the security of its corporate
>participants. Providing protection for WEF 2001 had necessitated the
>country's largest security operation since the Second World War, and
>this provoked cries of protest from within Switzerland.
>
>Thus, the WEF has moved to New York for 2002, and it is not clear when
>and if it will return to Davos. But as observers point out, "a great part of
>the attraction of the WEF is the 'ambience' of Davos as a retreat high up
>in the Swiss Alps. Without this, it is headed for oblivion."
>
>The centerpiece of this year's gathering in Porto Alegre are 26 plenary
>sessions over four days structured around four theme:  "the production
>of wealth and social reproduction," "access to wealth and sustainable
>development," "civil society and the public arena," and "political power
>and ethics in the new society."   Around this core will unfold scores of
>seminars, a people's tribunal on debt sponsored by Jubilee South, and
>about 5,000 workshops.  Marches and demonstrations of workers and
>peasants are also expected, led by the Brazilian mass organizations
>CUT (Central Union of Workers) and MST (the Movement of the
>Landless) that are among the key organizers of the WSF.
>
>TUMULTUOUS YEAR
>The anti-establishment forces gather in Porto Alegre after a tumultuous
>year.  Perhaps the apogee of the anti-globalization movement came
>during Group of Eight Meeting in Genoa in the third week of July, when
>some 300,000 people marched in the face of  police tear-gas attacks.
>Shortly after the Genoa clashes, in which one protester was killed by
>police, there was speculation in the world press that elite gatherings in
>non-authoritarian countries might no longer be possible in the future.
>And indeed, Canada's offer to hold the next G-8 meeting in a resort high
>up in the Canadian Rockies in the province of Alberta seemed to
>confirm the fact that the global elite was on the run from the democracy
>of the streets.
>
>Then came September 11, which stopped a surging movement dead in
>its tracks.  The next big confrontation between the establishment and its
>opponents was supposed to take place in late September in
>Washington, DC, during the annual fall meetings of the World Bank and
>the International Monetary Fund.   Unnerved by the prospect of a week
>of  massive protest that was expected to draw some 50,000 people, the
>Bretton Woods twins took advantage of the September 11 shock to
>cancel their meeting.  Without a target and sensitive to the sea change
>in the national mood in the US, organizers cancelled the protest and
>held a march for peace instead.
>
>The establishment followed up on the unexpected opportunity to
>reverse the crisis of legitimacy that had been wracking it prior to
>September 11 by pressing the developing countries to approve a
>declaration launching a limited set of trade negotiations during the
>Fourth Ministerial of the World Trade Organization (WTO) in Doha,
>Qatar, in mid-November.  Third World governments were told that
>unless they agreed to talks leading to greater liberalization, they would
>have to take responsibility for worsening a global recession that had
>been accelerated by the World Trade Center attack.
>
>Taking no chances, the WTO secretariat and the Qatar monarchy had
>worked to limit the number of legitimate NGO's attending the meeting to
>about sixty.  This ensured that the massive demonstrations on the street
>that characterized Seattle, which had served as a context for the famous
>developing country revolt at the Sheraton Convention Center, were not
>present in Doha, and under these circumstances, developing country
>opposition collapsed.
>
>REVERSAL OF FORTUNE
>Had the WSF meeting been held in late November of December, the
>mood of people coming would have been different.  The Bush
>administration would have been riding high after its devastating triumph
>in Afghanistan.  However, in the last few weeks, history, cunning as
>usual, has dealt Washington two massive body blows: the Enron
>debacle and Argentina's economic collapse.
>
>Enron has become the sordid symbol of the volatile mixture of
>deregulation and corruption that drove the US' "New Economy" in the
>1990's and helped lead it to what is possibly the worst global recession
>since the 1930's.
>
>Burdened with an unpayable $140 foreign debt, its industry in chaos,
>and 2,000 of its citizens falling under the poverty line daily, Argentina
>serves as a cautionary tale of the disaster that awaits those countries
>that take seriously the neoliberal advice to liberalize and globalize their
>economies.
>
>As the WSF opens, these twin disasters have brought back with a
>vengeance the crisis of legitimacy that the global elite and its project of
>corporate-driven globalization were experiencing prior to September
>11.  Porto Alegre provides the perfect site and the perfect moment for
>the counter-offensive on the part of the movements that believe that
>"another world is possible."
>
>* Dr. Walden Bello is the executive director of the Bangkok-based
>policy and advocacy institute Focus on the Global South and professor
>of sociology and public administration at the University of the
>Philippines.
>
>*************************************************


>THE TWIN DEBACLES OF GLOBALIZATION
>By Walden Bello*

http://www.focusweb.org/publications/2002/twin-debacles-of-globalisation.htm


>*************************************************
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