Foreign Correspondence

[Amaunet]

World Social Forum includes plan for the Americas

This looks to be the movement behind many of the demonstrations we are seeing throughout the world.

After decades of harsh neoliberal economic policy, the tide finally seems to be turning and the activists, advocacy groups and academics who descended on Caracas in January expected to be a part of the vibrant debates and discussions that are animating these turns in the Americas.
http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=41&ItemID=10047

Pls see:
Connection between demonstrations in France and US
#msg-10515954
Connection between Chavez and US immigration protests
#msg-10433548

-Am


World Social Forum concludes in southern Pakistan
(DPA)

29 March 2006



KARACHI - The World Social Forum (WSF) concluded in Pakistan’s port city of Karachi Wednesday, after six days of debate on issues such as the adverse effects of globalization on the developing world.


“The WSF has been a big success, bigger than what we had all expected,” Geoff Brown, a British Socialist Workers’ Party leader told Deutsche Presse-Agentur dpa, as delegates listened to music of Palestine and watched Pakistani folk dances that marked the end of the forum.

Brown said the forum debated issues of social justice, solidarity with resistance movements all over the world including the Jammu and Kashmir in South Asia, the struggle against illiteracy, and ways to defeat dictatorship and promote democracy in the developing world.

Over 20,000 delegates from some 58 countries from south and South-East Asia, China, the Middle East, Europe and the Americas attended the six-day forum, which had begun last Friday with a call to “rethink and recreate” globalization for benefit of people in developing world, particularly those in South Asia.

The forum was founded in 2001 by community organizers, trade unionists, youth groups and academics as an alternative to the establishment World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland.

This year, for the first time, three World Social Forums were held. Caracas, Venezuela and Bamako, Mali hosted two of them in January, and Karachi followed this month after the deadly October earthquake in Pakistan caused a postponement.

Brown noted the presence of delegates from Palestine and the disputed Himalayan region of Jammu and Kashmir, and expressed hope that the forum would boost to resistance movements all over the world.

Another human-rights activist from Nepal, Raj Kumar Trikhatri ,said the Karachi forum enabled delegates from across the world to debate a comprehensive strategy on countering globalization and increasing poverty, absence of education and health-care facilities in developing world.

“We are going back to our country fully satisfied and with a confidence that the WSF will continuing mounting pressure on the imperialistic approach and policies of the developed world, which is patronizing an inequitable process of globalization,” Trikhatri said.

Nirmala Despande, seasoned politician and member of India’s Rajya Sabha, or Senate, said the WSF slogan “another world is possible” brings hopes for a “bright future” of a “vibrant” developing world.

“Now we should think of raising another slogan: victory to whole world for peace and justice,” Deshpande said.





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