7 - 13 February 2002
Issue No.572
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Al-Ahram Weekly Online 7 - 13 February 2002 Issue No.572 |
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'Another world is possible'
While it was business as usual at the World Economic Forum in New York, the World Social Forum in Porto Alegre, Brazil, formulated a new vision for the future, writes Faiza Rady
This week in New York, the rich and powerful "masters of the universe" -- consisting of some 2,700 delegates at the World Economic Forum (WEF) -- converged at the plush Waldorf- Astoria Hotel to discuss the state of globalisation and the world economy. Notwithstanding the global recession and dire economic forecasts for the coming year, the tone of the meeting was -- in the words of the International Monetary Fund's (IMF) managing director, Horst Koehler -- "cautiously optimistic." "I think we have to state that the global economy is still weak but we also now hope that a recovery is under way," said Koehler.
While Koehler's message sounded sufficiently upbeat to his fellow delegates -- who included luminaries such as Microsoft magnate Bill Gates, UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan and former US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright -- it did not quite alleviate their lurking sense of insecurity. Consequently, the 'masters of the universe' remained shielded behind fortified police barricades.
As Koehler was speaking, police helicopters circled above the Waldorf and 5,000 armed New York policemen -- some of them sporting surreal-looking anti-riot gear -- roamed the hotel perimeters to protect the high-powered WEF delegations from protesters. "With all that's happened here, I don't think it is the time to be messing with the New York police," one police officer told the BBC.
In preparation for the meeting, the Waldorf was meticulously fortified. Hastily erected concrete barriers around the hotel provided a reinforced no-entry zone to the conference venue, and vehicles were denied access to surrounding midtown city blocks. Commuters had to show picture identification to pass through to go to work.
It is no coincidence that New York City's virtual stage of siege was highly reminiscent of the post-11 September days. Prior to the WEF meeting, organisers had explained that the meeting's relocation from the chic Swiss Alpine resort town of Davos -- the traditional yearly WEF retreat -- to New York, expressed a gesture of solidarity with the grief-stricken city in the wake of 11 September.
Critics view claims that the meeting's relocation is due to a show of solidarity with New York with a solid pinch of scepticism. Used and abused by the Bush administration, the other side of the New York "solidarity" coin harks to the "either-you're-with-us-or-you're-against-us" refrain -- the disallowance of any form of dissent.
Since the Seattle marches contributed to the closing down of the World Trade Organisation meeting in 1999, politicians, in tandem with the corporate establishment, have spared no effort to delegitimise the anti-capitalist protest movement. In the post-11 September era, however, the "war against terrorism" has added a new dimension to this strategy.
Russel Mokhiber and Robert Weisman from Corporate Watch, a US-based trade watchdog, dismissed the New York solidarity rhetoric as politically expedient public relation ploys. "Corporate interests and their proxies are looking to exploit the 11 September tragedy to advance a self-serving agenda that has nothing to do with human rights and everything to do with corporate profits and dangerous ideologies," commented Mokhiber and Weisman in Alternet, an alternative press website.
In New York City, demonstration organisers cautiously avoided the trap. Well aware of the fact that the WEF was brandishing the 11 September rhetoric to label the anti-capitalist movement "terrorist," disciplined organisers regimented marches and kept them peaceful -- despite the ultra-patriotic hype and the occasionally heavy-handed police provocations.
Sponsored by a New York-based anti-capitalist group called Act Now to Stop War and End Racism, thousands of demonstrators marched in midtown Manhattan chanting, "Human rights, not corporate greed", and "Capitalism -- shut it down." Besides the anti-capitalist slant, the protesters denounced the US funding of Israel and carried placards reading "Let Iraq live." They also condemned the US-led "war against terrorism" and the potential expansion of the war to Somalia and other "rogue" states.
While the WEF met behind closed doors, huddling behind the secure walls of the Waldorf- Astoria, a radically different meeting was being held in the sunny southern Brazilian town of Porto Alegre. A people's forum, gathering some 30,000 activists from the South and the North, the second World Social Forum (WSF) provided an alternative progressive vision to the corporate- driven form of neo-liberal globalisation. With no police force in sight, and no barricades seperating the rulers from the ruled, the WSF meeting was inaugurated with a show of music, dance and chants denouncing the US-led destruction of Afghanistan and capitalist globalisation.
Workers, trade union delegates, representatives of left-wing political parties, NGOs, anti- capitalist activists, intellectuals and writers of the calibre of Noam Chomsky, Naomi Klein, Samir Amin and Eduardo Gulliano, all gathered last Thursday at the five-day summit to lay out their version of how to resist the forces of globalisation as defined by the theoreticians of neo- liberal ideology.
Scheduled to coincide with the New York meeting of the world's richest nations, the Porto Alegre summit challenges the WEF agenda, using the slogan, "Another world is possible."
The delegation of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU) contextualised the WEF's inherent fears of civil society as an emerging global force and a powerful opponent. "Within civil society, organised labour represents the most formidable force challenging the neo- liberal order, based on the hegemony of transnational corporations," a COSATU statement said.
Noam Chomsky, the keynote speaker at the WSF, accused the US and its allies of exploiting 11 September to undermine opposition and extend their control at home and abroad. "The message is that we, the powerful, will pursue our own agenda even more relentlessly than before, while you, the rest of the world, are supposed to be quiet and submissive and obedient and not raise your voices," explained Chomsky.
Calls for debt cancellation to the South figured prominently on the WSF agenda. Eric Toussaint, director of the Committee for the Cancellation of Third World Debt, pointed out some of the most flagrant contradictions of the debt and its correlation to southern poverty. According to UN calculations, said Toussaint, it would be necessary to spend an annual $80 billion over the next 10 years to end world poverty. Yet, this amount is almost three times smaller than the total service on the debt paid by third world countries in 2001. In other words, if southern governments were to default on their debt and, instead, invest in national poverty alleviation, they would wipe out poverty within one year.
Chomsky argued that the debt could be relieved, and in many cases eliminated, on the basis of the capitalist principle that the banks should assume the risk, and that the burden of repayment should be borne by those who borrowed the money -- which excludes the poor and, for that matter, the vast majority of the population. "Naturally, the rich and powerful reject the capitalist principle with horror. Lenders want to gain the high yields, but prefer that the associated risk be socialised -- transferred to taxpayers," Chomsky explained.
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