[WSF-Discuss] [DEBATE] : Stedile v paunchy Chavez: The Economist makes fun of the WSF

[peter waterman]

Correction: Cde Waterman left that hospital six weeks or so ago and is 
now alive, well, and emailing in The Hague.

Secondly, he is not giggling since he is used to the impressive 
superficiality and particular biases of the bourgeois (in this case 
neo-liberal) media.

He can, however, confirm the threat to heads as well as windscreens of 
the mango trees in Belem.

Pw

CACIM wrote:
> (Somewhere in a Rio hospital, recovering from illness, is our dear
> comrade Peter Waterman, giggling away at this.)
> Dear Capitalists, Admit You Got it Wrong
>
> Feb 5th 2009 | BELEM
> The Economisthttp://www.economist.com/world/international/displaystory.cfm?story_id=13061828
>
> OFTEN mocked for an endless ability to disagree with itself, the World
> Social Forum--an annual jamboree for NGOs, anti-capitalists, leftish
> intellectuals, bohemians and bishops-was unusually united this year.
> More united, in some ways, than the recent World Economic Forum in the
> Swiss resort of Davos, a gathering of political and corporate bigwigs
> to which the social forum supposedly responds.
>
> While Davos Man was busy looking for someone to blame for his
> predicament, no such doubts troubled his opposite number in Belém, a
> city on the edge of the Brazilian rainforest where mango trees grow so
> tall that their fruits can shatter car windscreens when they fall. The
> culprit was the whole current design of the world economy, promoting
> competition. Free trade and free movement of capital needed to be
> re-thought, participants insisted. Some even had ideas on what should
> replace it.
>
> The forum's main purpose is to bring together social movements (which
> generally dislike being called NGOs) from around the world to network.
> In that respect, it is rather like any other business conference,
> though some participants carry spears and wear the feathers of various
> unfortunate parrots on their heads. The forum is skewed towards Latin
> America, especially Brazil. One of the founders of the forum is a
> Brazilian businessman called Oded Grajew, and its first meeting was
> held in Porto Alegre, in southern Brazil.
>
> Of more than 5,000 accredited organisations, 4,193 were from South
> America, roughly ten times the number of African outfits present. This
> partly reflects the number and prominence of NGOs in South America and
> the semi-official role which some governments give them.
>
> This year Brazil's left-leaning government gave the forum a subsidy of
> R$120m ($52m)--a piece of generosity that was not universally popular
> at a time when economic growth may be on the verge of halting.
>
> As a result, many causes dear to the Brazilian left were well
> represented. T-shirts demanded asylum for Cesare Battisti, a left-wing
> Italian emigre convicted of murder in Rome, who is currently in
> Brazil. Banners called for Brazilian troops to be withdrawn from
> Haiti, where they are doing a good job of containing violence.
>
> A proposed hydroelectric dam on the Madeira river (a tributary of the
> Amazon) was denounced, and the country's new oil find claimed for its
> people. Plenty of people came from further afield, like the Catholic
> Bishops' Conference of India, with a Delphic slogan: 'We would rather
> sweat in peace than bleed in war.' And there were swarms of young,
> largely white folk who treated the forum like a music festival
> .
>   

-- 



* 'Needed: A Global Labour Charter Movement', ESF Malmo Update: http://www.netzwerkit.de/projekte/waterman/gc

* 'Challenging Empires: The World Social Forum. (2nd Edition, 488 pp). Ordering: http://www.blackrosebooks.net/wsf.htm  

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* 'Recovering Internationalism; Creating New Global Solidarity', http://www.choike.org/nuevo_eng/informes/6439.html  

* 'Prague 1968: "Workers of the World, Forgive Me!"', http://www.tni.org/archives/waterman/prague1968.pdf  

* 'A Union Internationalism for the 21stC', http://www.plutobooks.com/cgi-local/nplutobrows.pl?chkisbn=9780745327563  

* 'International Labour Studies in the UK’, in "Work Organisation Labour and Globalisation", Vol. 2, No. 1, pp. 180-200. http://www.analyticapublications.co.uk/