Global Crisis Strengthens World Social Forum's Legitimacy

[marmar]

Global Crisis Strengthens WSF’s Legitimacy
By Julio Godoy


BERLIN, Feb 5, 2011 (IPS) - European non-governmental organisations combating neo-liberal globalisation find their position vindicated by the ongoing socio-economic and environmental crisis upsetting the world.

The legitimacy of the demands of the European members of the World Social Forum (WSF) is not only founded in the massive support they enjoy from workers and peasants groups across the globe. Now, it enjoys the endorsement of governments which not long ago were supporters of neo- liberal globalisation.

"The endorsement by European governments of our basic demands, such as the transaction tax, constitutes a great satisfaction," Hugo Braun, of the Association for the Taxation of Financial Transactions for the Aid of Citizens (ATTAC), told IPS.

"But European governments must still realise that the global crisis cannot be solved with simply declarations of intentions. The system cannot be repaired, the system must be replaced by another one," Braun said. "We need a strict control of financial markets, a democratisation of the economy, a transfer of wealth from the top of society to the lower classes, on a global basis." ..............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.ipsnews.net/news.asp?idnews=54373

[social_critic]

1. Oh oh

I hope these guys aren't communists. I don't like communists.

[marmar]

2. Que?

[SpiralHawk]

3. I hope these guys aren't RepubliCorp Suckerpuppets

I don't like RepubliCorp Suckerpuppets.

[rucky]

4. I hope these guys aren't Steelers fans.

[BOG PERSON]

8. don't you mean "eviscerate the proletariat"?

that's what stewie griffin would say.

[Peace Patriot]

5. This article is very interesting, though its first half is a bit impenetrable.

Sentences like the lede line drive me to make up a word--globbillabobbillizing. (NGOspeak.) BUT...

I am astonished that Nicolas Sarkozy is actively backing the "financial transaction tax"--Europe's rightwingers sure are different from our rightwingers (theirs are sane)--and that Germany agrees, AND...get this...Sarkozy wants to regulate food prices!!!

The Europeans are sounding like Hugo Chavez! (Or is it that Hugo Chavez and his government and the Venezuelan people were just the avant garde of economic reform and others have been inspired by them, first in Latin America, now in Europe? Could this be why our sick Wall Street gangsters, banksters and billionaire hoarders hate Chavez so much?)

----------------------------

The financial transaction tax is one of the most emblematic demands of European NGOs opposed to neo-liberalism. The idea - which calls for the exaction of a small fee on all speculative financial transactions to pay for development projects in Asia, Africa, and Latin America - is based on the proposal of late Nobel Prize winner in economics James Tobin. In 1997 the tax was the founding pillar of the ATTAC group in France.

ATTAC is a founding member of the European Social Forum (ESF) and of the WSF.

The call for a financial transaction tax has recently been endorsed by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who promised to put it on the agenda of the Group of 8 and the Group of 20 debates. During 2011, France will be coordinating both groups.

The German government publicly stated its support for Sarkozy’s plan to put the financial transaction tax high on the G-8 and G-20 agendas this year. Sarkozy also announced that his government would propose control instruments against speculation in foodstuff markets to stop rising prices and guarantee food supply. --from the OP

[social_critic]

6. Given the state of the EU's economy, I doubt this will be implemented

Merkel is running around reading the weaklings the riot act and telling them to put their house in order. IF they put in a financial transaction tax like this, they'll have to use it to shore up their fiscal deficit. If they pay for "development projects" it'll be to finance or subsidize exports to the third world.

Neo liberalism works, but it has to be coupled to legal reform and the elimination of cronyism and corruption. Latin American and African countries have been unable to chage their systems all the way, to mimic what they use in say Canada or Sweden. And this means they are still performing in a half ased fashion. Countries like Chile do seem to have a better idea of where they are headed. And it seems Brazil is striking a nice balance. They even privatized Petrobras, and got a ton of money for the shares they sold.

[Peace Patriot]

7. Brazil's hugely popular outgoing president just said capitalism is broken.

And so is your outmoded, rightwing/neo-liberal malarky, social_critic.

---

Working class hero Lula says capitalism is dead
By RUKMINI CALLIMACHI
The Associated Press
Monday, February 7, 2011; 1:05 PM

DAKAR, Senegal -- Brazil's first working class president and an icon of the downtrodden said Monday that the global financial crisis proves capitalism is broken.

Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva also said it was time for affluent countries to begin paying attention to nations like Senegal, ranked as one of the world's poorest.

"For too long, rich countries saw us as peripheral, problematic, even dangerous," said Silva, who stepped down last year with one of the highest approval ratings in his country's history, "Today we are an essential, undeniable part of the solution to the biggest crisis of the last decade - a crisis that was not created by us, but that emerged from the great centers of world capitalism." --from the Washington Pissed via the Associated Pukes
(MORE)
Posted by Judi Lynn at http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=102x4724445

---

Another quote from the World Social Forum, same source:

"We can see it with the global financial crisis. We can see it with climate change and global warming," said Morales, who in 2005 became the first leader to be elected from Bolivia's indigenous majority. "The capitalism of today is a capitalism that no longer produces but just consumes."

---

Go, Lula! Go, Evo! Go, Hugo! Go, Rafael! Go, Cristina! Go, Fernando! Go, Jose! Go, Daniel! Cheers to these and other leftist leaders and to the people of Latin America who recognized before anyone that our system was spiraling into a greed-driven nosedive accompanied by the screams of the dying and the tortured as the U.S. war machine tried outright oil theft and massive aggression to prop it up, while sucking the last life out of the western world's economy with war profiteering. Chavez and the Venezuelans were the first to warn us, followed by many others and now Lula, who all along has been a close friend and ally of Chavez and the Bolivarians. Their analysis of their own countries' woes in the death grip of "neo-liberalism" has been brilliant and prescient. A big, big correction needs to be made in the other direction--toward stringent regulation of the greedy and state power acting on behalf of the poor majority and the country as a whole. Lula took the cue from Chavez and imposed similar conditions on the exploitation of Brazil's new oil find--majority state control and a large percentage of the profits go to social programs to allieviate poverty and bootstrap the poor. Venezuela's model! Greed is BAD! Transglobal corporations stripping countries of their resources, treating workers like slaves and privatizing the "commons" are BAD, BAD, BAD. That is "neo-liberalism"--capitalism gone bonkers to make the rich richer and destroying everything in its way, including democracy, as we have seen, to our grief, in this country.

Time to re-think everything--and we need to look to Latin America for the models, including honest, transparent elections.

[sufrommich]

9. Well, if Working class hero Lula said it, it must be true. nt

[Peace Patriot]

11. I don't blame the Associated Pukes' 'framing' on Lula any more than I blame Lula for

being social_critic's preferred Latin American leftist (as opposed to that "communist" Hugo"--social_critic's favorite epithet).

[social_critic]

14. I don't use epithets here

Hugo is a communistoid. Actually, he's more of a fascist populist demagogue and a communistoid to boot. I say communistoid because I heard he is trying to implement a barter system in Venezuela. We're supposed to go to the market carrying plastic spoons left over from the last birthday party, and then stand around and barter them for AA batteries. The AA batteries we can trade for the bag of corn flour to make arepas.

Don't you love the guy? He uses his time on national TV to describe his bowel movements, picks up his cell phone in front of the camera to issue threats, scratches his belly, belches, and announces he's going to Argentina to check out Cristinas behind. What a showman.

[social_critic]

12. Lula's out of date, and the things, they're a-changing

Venezuela has the worst economy in the hemisphere. Ecuador isn't doing that well either. Morales just had a conuption when he tried to eliminate fuel subsidies and the people rioted.

You got a few countries being run by autocrats, that's true. They are also losing popularity, their economies are creaky, their trademark is economic failure. They seem headed to the trash heap of history.

As for Lula, he was a good president. I guess he plans to make a living peddling baloney. Maybe he'll write a book you guys will buy: "Cuddly Bear: Selling Brazilian Industry on the Left".

[burrowowl]

10. I've bookmarked it

[marmar]

13. I can see that the Free Market Koolaid deliveries are still coming.

nt

[social_critic]

15. But I'm sure you'll take the Slave Market Soda pop instead.

Cheers.

[marmar]

16. Umm, okay.

:wtf: