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Anti-Globalization Forum Moots Alternative To WTO
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Activists protest the U.S. hegemony by impersonating an evilized Bush (AFP)
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BOMBAY,
January 17 (IslamOnline.net & News Agencies) - Opened with the
boycott of famous U.S. trademarks like Pepsi and Microsoft, the World
Social Forum (WSF) proposed Saturday, January 17, setting up a rival
body in the developing world to the World Trade Organization (WTO) and
slammed the increasingly growing U.S. hegemony.
The
WSF, a counterweight to the World Economic Forum (WEF), opened Friday,
January 16, in this Indian commercial city, bringing together around
100,000 from 130 countries, reported Agence France-Presse (AFP).
Running
computers on Linux, a free software that rivals Microsoft, leading
activists saw eye to eye that their main challenge now was to launch
campaigns against the WTO, which they accused of doing nothing to
bridge the yawning gap between the rich and the poor.
"The
WTO is completely dishonest, deceitful and against human life,"
Vandana Shiva, a leading Indian ecologist, told the annual convention
of the anti-globalization movement.
He
said the
breakdown of WTO negotiations in September in Cancun,
Mexico, showed a growing resistance to the global trade body from the
developing world.
"It
is clear now that what we will eat, produce and live for will be
controlled by corporates benefiting from WTO," said Shiva, who
has led high-profile campaigns in India against genetically modified
food and the privatization of natural resources.
Brazilian
trade unionist Rafael Freire Neto also called for increased
cooperation from the so-called G-21 group of developing countries,
which include Brazil and India, to counter rich countries.
"At
Cancun the G-21 was one at least in showing the power of participation
for one cause. It should now be more aggressive," he said.
"Our
challenge is now to build campaigns against the WTO, and also against
neo-liberalism that is spreading across the world. What we did at
Cancun we should do everywhere."
Jose
Bove, the French sheep farmer and symbol
of the anti-globalization movement, said "the WTO
has to exit agriculture".
"Of
the entire agriculture production in the world, 90 percent is produced
and consumed locally. But the other 10 percent is exported by just a
few multinationals," he charged.
The
activists also criticized the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement
(NAFTA) among Canada, Mexico and the United States.
It
is the fourth World Social Forum but the first to be held outside
Brazil.
Anti-Bush
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Indian activists, acting as freedom fighters, lead a fellow activist enacting Bush being arrested at the 2004 WSF (AFP)
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As
the anti-WTO seminar getting hotter, portraits for U.S. President
George W. Bush were depicted in assorted states of defacement outside
the auditorium as the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq was, in effect, also
high on the agenda.
Arundhati
Roy, the Indian novelist and political essayist, called for activists
to select two U.S. companies associated with the Iraq war and launch a
worldwide campaign to shut them down.
Iranian
rights activist Shirin Ebadi, the 2003 Nobel
Peace laureate , said the war should be given due attention as
it is one of the burning issues nowadays.
"This
meeting is for a better world and needs to focus on all current
international issues and one of the most important ones is the problem
of Iraq," Ebadi told AFP.
She
stressed the forum could also work to ensure universal protection of
human rights and to ease income disparity around the world.
Ebadi
seized her Nobel acceptance speech in November to lambaste the U.S.
for using the 9/11 attacks as
an excuse to violate international law and human rights.
Action
But
a group of leftist activists formed Saturday an alternative meeting to
the WSF, arguing that the forum has failed so far in translating its
decisions into concrete steps.
They
also said it could not stop the United States from going to war to
depose now-captured Iraqi president Saddam Hussein.
"Any
liberation without action is meaningless, but action without
reflection is chaotic. This is why we are here," Bangladeshi
leftist Badruddin Umar said at the inauguration of the Mumbai
Resistance.
"The
imperialistic war in Iraq was not condemned in any country but by the
thousands all over the world protesting on the streets," Umar
said.
Despite
their smaller size, however, Mumbai Resistance campaigners said they
would focus less on policy initiatives debated at the WSF than on
drafting a common platform for leftists to be released on the March 20
anniversary of the start of the Iraq war.
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