Venezuela's Chavez Heads to Social Forum

[Rose Siding]

PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil - Venezuelan leader Hugo Chavez heads to the World Social Forum, sure to get a sympathetic reception for his push to redistribute wealth from Latin America's elite to its poor.

The self-professed revolutionary was scheduled to arrive Sunday in southern Brazil to attend the annual protest to the simultaneous World Economic Forum (news - web sites) held for the planet's movers and shakers at the Swiss ski resort of Davos.

Tens of thousands of leftist activists are attending the social forum, railing against the U.S.-led occupation of Iraq (news - web sites) and the global spread of liberalized trade, a move they say benefits multinational corporations at the expense workers in developed countries.

Chavez sympathizes with those issues, and is trying to launch a "Bolivarian Revolution" in Venezuela, a political movement loosely based on the ideas of South American independence hero Simon Bolivar.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=589&ncid=734&e=1&u=/ap/20050130/ap_on_re_la_am_ca/social_forum

U.S., Brazil Aim to Relaunch Trade Deal
DAVOS, Switzerland (Reuters) - Brazil and the United States are exploring ways to breathe life into moribund talks designed to forge a free-trade region covering the Americas, senior U.S. and Brazilian officials said Sunday.

"They are certainly not dead," U.S. Trade Representative Robert Zoellick said, referring to negotiations on the Free Trade Area of the Americas, or FTAA, an accord that would tear down trade barriers among every country in the Western Hemisphere except Cuba.

Zoellick met Brazilian Foreign Minister Celso Amorim earlier in the day in the Swiss ski resort of Davos in an effort to find common ground for the talks, which have been stalled for more than a year.
...
Critics in both countries fear the FTAA would mean the loss of jobs and a rise of corporate power they associated with the North American Free Trade Area, which groups Canada, Mexico and the United States.

http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/nm/20050130/bs_nm/davos_trade_dc_6

[lebkuchen]

1. I hope Chavez doesn't attempt any milk programs for the poor

like Allende did. The US won't put up with that socialist BS.

[ugarte]

2. Why do I get nervous every time he gets on a plane?

nt

[hector459]

7. Because you know how many others like him we have assassinated.

that's why I get nervous.

[TahitiNut]

3. I hate the "redistribute wealth" meme.

Embedded in that phrase is the presumption that the "re"distribution of wealth isn't already taking place. There is absolutely no economic system on the planet that's not already '"re"distributing wealth.' The real question is whether or not that system is equitable and just.

The next question is whether or not Chavez is (1) reforming the economic system in Venezuela to more equitably '"re"distribute wealth' and/or (2) confiscating already-distributed wealth and reallocating it according to some equitable compensation for past injustices. I strongly suspect it's far more of the former than the latter.

Every time the corporatist media bangs this "redistribution" gong, every corporatard panics about the money they have under their mattress.

Why is there no exposure of the real question: What constitutes an "owner's" just share of the wealth created by the labor of employees? Is it 10%? 90%? Whatever they can get away with? Why is it never pointed out that employees in the S&P500 are compensated for less than 40% of the wealth they create???

[HuckleB]

4. Such a quiet thread.

All the blatant, cardboard, cookie-cutter propangandist anti-Chavez disruptors have apparently outed themselves, leaving these threads as mostly "read only."

:hi:

[Solon]

6. Ha, Commie Pinko and I killed off two a couple of days ago!!!!

One you can take a guess at, another was a troll with almost no posts to their name.

[Minstrel Boy]

5. Cuban child inaugurates 5th World Social Forum

Cuban child inaugurates 5th World Social Forum

Granma, Jan 27

PORTO ALEGRE, BRAZIL (PL) – Last night, a six-year-old Cuban girl held the attention of several thousand participants at the 5th World Social Forum (WSF), when she officially opened the debates along with three adults.

The inaugural event took place after a mass march in which 200,000 people took part according to military police estimates, a record for this type of event.

The brief address opening the 2,000-plus programmed events and to work "for justice, dignity as a universal human value" was read out by three adults in Portuguese, English and French, and by the Cuban child in Spanish.

The child chosen, Ivette González, is the daughter of René González, one of the five Cubans serving harsh prison terms in the United States for combating terrorism. The US authorities have repeatedly denied visas to Ivette and her mother so that they can visit him.

In the opening address the World Social Forum participants, who have arrived in Porto Alegre from more than 100 countries, were introduced as the members of "another and possible world," which is standing up to "a world in which neoliberalism is furthering wars and inequalities."

http://www.granma.cu/ingles/2005/enero/juev27/06sfnina.html

[hector459]

8. Ever wonder why the US goes out its way to assassinate leaders who try

help their own people and can get close enough to Saddam to shake his hand but would rather invade the country and costs so many lives and dollars instead of assassinating someone like him?

[Solon]

9. He was our puppet at the time...

Then he committed the gravest of sins, he trusted us, so then he invaded Kuwait for cross drilling into Iraqi fields, with our blessing, and then we turned around and stabbed him in the back. He became too belligerent at the end of the '80s, we had to try to knock him down a peg or two, and we did.

[fshrink]

10. I'm scared for the guy.

Saying what he says, doing what he does, he must have been put on a dozen of hit-lists...