|
 Finding comfort and solidarity under the slogan "another world is possible," tens of thousands of anti-globalization activists gathered Tuesday, January 27, in the northern Brazilian city of Belém for the opening of the World Social Forum (WSF), which will run to Sunday.
The forum's founder Francisco Whitaker said participants would discuss ideas to create "a new civilization, based on other values."
First organized in 2001, in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, WSF developed as a counter balance to the World Economic Forum in Switzerland.
"The forum is an open university, where all ideas are legitimate. The event's proposal is in itself to stimulate plurality," said forum organizer Cândido Grzybowski.
About 120,000 people from 150 countries were set to take part in the forum's 2,600 activities.
On Thursday, they will be joined by presidents Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Rafael Correa of Ecuador, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela.
At a press conference Tuesday, Italy's Rafaela Bolini - a representative from the European Social Forum - recalled that the event has for years denounced "neo-liberal globalization and the capitalist market," for which activists faced criticism and "even political repression."
"The denunciation of the dangers for humanity, for the planet and for nature was true. And now we are here because that reality needs to become visible. The solution to this crisis will not be real if it comes from the same people who created the crisis," Bolini said.
Brazilian businessman Oded Grajew, another forum founder, said the steps taken to combat the ongoing economic crisis were not aimed at a lasting solution, but were merely being enacted to save the very system that caused the current problems.
"They used to say that resources were limited. Now, in the face of the crisis, trillions of dollars suddenly showed up to save carmakers, banks and bankrupt firms - funds that would have been more than enough to combat poverty and to improve health and education," he said.
After its launch in 2001, the WSF was held in Porto Alegre again in 2002, 2003 and 2005. India hosted it in 2004, while Venezuela did so in 2006 and Kenya in 2007. In 2008 there was no one single site, but the forum was held simultaneously in 82 different countries
Mercopress
 |
Subscribe to this comment's feed
The small, coastal town of Condé is located just a twenty minute's drive from João Pessoa, the capital of Paraíba. The Northeast of Brazil has historically been a place of encounter and mixing between peoples. For millenia groups of indigenous people fished, farmed, migrated and sometimes fought along this large, fertile area. 
The Brazilian diplo-MÁ-cia (bad diplomacy) carries on its accelerated course towards the non-acknowledgment of human rights, although sometimes it takes pleasure in saying that it does precisely the opposite. The visit of Iran's president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, is another example of a diplomatic omission that verges on hypocrisy. 
On July 4, 2006, representatives of Argentina, Brazil, Paraguay and Uruguay met in Caracas to sign the protocol for the entrance of Venezuela into the Southern Common Market (Mercosur). After two and a half years, the protocol was approved by the legislative bodies of Argentina and Uruguay, and as of now it may be only days away from being ratified by the continent's economic megalith, Brazil. 
Some sectors of the fight against AIDS have suggested that Thabo Mbeki, the former president of South Africa, committed genocide through his absence from the fight against the illness in his country throughout his two terms. 
One hundred and eleven years after Brazil abolished slavery, the number of workers deprived of their freedom is still huge. They raise cattle, produce charcoal, sugar cane or timber. Some of them, most undocumented Bolivians, work in basements of small apparel factories in São Paulo and other metropolis. 
On November 7, 2009 a few friends and I had an opportunity to take a look inside a Brazilian jail outside the city of Rio de Janeiro. We were able to take some amateur footage of our experience on video (see link below). It's no surprise, of course, that the typical Brazilian jail lacks some of the functionality of those in North America or Europe, but our experience that day was quite shocking. 
Depletion of the Amazon Rainforest is not a new concern facing environmentalists, biologists, ecologists, and a growing number of the Amazonian indigenous peoples. For decades they have feared for the fate of the world's most biologically diverse and species-rich hothouse. 
Geisy Arruda made history this week in Brazil, but for all the wrong reasons. What began as a poorly planned fashion statement has become a worldwide tale. Geisy decided to wear a pink mini-dress to her private college in São Paulo state, and after that, all hell broke loose. 
The push of vigilante groups in Rio de Janeiro's favelas (shantytowns) in the last three years is the most important and alarming information of the just-released study by the Rio de Janeiro University's Violence Research Center (Nupev-Uerj). 
A dispute over drug trafficking territory in Rio de Janeiro has intensified lately, leaving in its wake unprecedented acts of violence, such as the downing of a police helicopter in the northern zone of the city on October 17. Three policemen died and another two were injured. This event has drawn the attention of the international media, who are raising the issue of public security for the 2016 Olympics to be held in Rio.