Guardian Utd: Place in the sun for everyone--except Bush, Coke and Windows

[Jack Rabbit]

From the Guardian Unlimited
Dated Saturday January 17

Place in the sun for everyone - except George Bush, Coke and Windows
World Social Forum unites 80,000 against globalisation
By Randeep Ramesh in Mumbai

On the edge of a large field in a sprawling northern suburb of Mumbai, formerly Bombay, the French sheep farmer and mascot of the anti-globalisation movement, José Bové, is holding forth among a group of farm workers from South America. Mr Bové, pipe clenched firmly between his teeth, is selling his message that "le capitalisme" is not the only way.
Agreeing with him are 80,000 people from 130 countries at the World Social Forum, who want to prove that they are not just noisy anarchists but can offer alternatives to create a fairer planet. At the forum, held for the first time in Asia, are professors from Tunisia, a Pakistani hard rock band, nuns from Ireland and a woman wearing a sign reading "Australians for Peace".
Everybody is sure of what they are against - capitalism, imperialism and George Bush. Posters proclaim that "Asia Pacific women say no to war", and there are talks on "US hegemony and the Arab street".
Nobody can say what precisely they are all for. This does not seem to worry the main speakers, who include the Nobel peace laureate and Iranian women's rights activist Shirin Ebadi, the Booker prize-winning author Arundhati Roy and the American economist and Nobel economics prizewinner Joseph Stiglitz. There are 1,200 events centred on the slogan "Another world is possible".

Read more.

[Dirk39]

1. Why are U.S. activists so lazy?

There are people from the U.S., too. Well, some. But whenever something like this happens outside the U.S., not to mention when the main-language isn't english, there's a lack of U.S. participants.
O.K., I'm at home in Germany, too. I just send some friends there this year:-)

Another world is possible,
Dirk

[Voltaire99]

2. Flaws with the conference

Well, people who actually are working for change tend to be too busy to fly off and sit in a field for a few days. :-)

Besides, this conference is partly sincere, and partly bullshit. I respect Stieglitz, Roy and Bové. But not this extremism:

"The WSF people simply shout slogans when out of power and then implement pro-globalisation policies when in power," says GN Saibaba, organiser of the rival event. Mr Saibaba claims that the WSF has been turned into a "talking" shop that has blunted its aims. "The WSF are not serious about changing the world. They do not accept the need for armed struggle and we do."

As Lennon sang, "All I can tell you is brother you have to wait."

It's also pretty silly to turn down Ford Foundation money, which underwrites many useful causes. Another world is possible. But it can't be created on a dime, or simply by foreswearing Coke and running Linux. ;-)

[Dirk39]

3. Armed struggle, coke or linux....

Lord, I have a huge problem, understanding your post. Does it mean that you did foresee - I know americans believe in weired things that exceed even astrology :-) - that some people would talk some nonsense there, and you decided, to stay at home. 20 degrees celsius below zero in New York.
C'mon, C'mon.
Drinking red whine instead of Coke and using the evil microsoft OS,
Dirk

[Dover]

4. I think people will seem somewhat disjointed and muddled around these

as yet unformed issues until solutions become a bit clearer for where we need to go and how we'll get there from here. That's always true when breaking new ground. It requires a period of re-educating people, introducing new ways of looking at things, getting people into power who are inclined toward these changes, etc. It's not an overnight kind of deal. This change is vast and many layered.

People need to gather together to support these efforts and hear those who are trying to introduce these ideas. People also need to, and are, working on these changes in more local and personal ways. It's all good...and necessary.

Thanks for this post. It would be great if we could begin our own think tank here on DU around these issues. I wonder if there are any members who are on the cutting edge of these ideas who could educate us a bit more on this topic?

[Dirk39]

5. Do it, do it, DU it....

I can only talk about my impressions, but esp. the situation in Europe has changed sooooo much. There are many many people, who are connected to everywhere.
If you compare progressive or leftwing newspapers from years ago and today:
Today, it's Germany, Mexico, Venezuela, Cuba, Columbia, India. It really starts feeling as if people would really cross borders faster than any airplane, sometimes with a mouse click, sometimes with a railway-ticket to India.
You want to talk about Bush and Europe? No, you don't want to talk about it, because you or some of your friends did travel to Genua just years before. And black dressed italian police officers did force you to say, I'm a nigger, I'm a jew, I better be dead pretty soon. After you wasn't allowed to go to a toilet or eat or drink something for about 15 hours.
Some of us were urinating in their trousers. In the very heart of democratic Europe. And none of the people, I was with and talked with were violent in any way.
And besides, if we talk about justice: you can shoot your neighbour now for no reasons, and no police officer would do something like this.
We're so close to one another and so far and we couldn't care less...
At least I couldn't: I'm a jew in Israel, I'm a palestine, I'm a communist in Cuba, I'm a nigger everywhere, I'm a middle-class german in stupid neoliberal Germany,
Dirk