[Seattle-editorial] FP: related article for WSF
anarch3m
anarch3m at lycos.com
Tue Jan 13 23:15:22 PST 2004
--2nd ed
walt
--------- Original Message ---------
DATE: Tue, 13 Jan 2004 22:53:25
From: Sheri Herndon <sheri at speakeasy.org>
To: Seattle Editorial <seattle-editorial at indymedia.org>
Cc:
>
>====== Forwarded Message ======
>Date: 1/13/04 3:13 PM
>Received: 1/13/04 8:43 AM -0000
>From: N.Bullard at focusweb.org (n.bullard at focusweb.org)
>To: n.bullard at focusweb.org (Mumbai media)
>
>13 January 2004
>
>MEDIA ADVISORY
>4th WORLD SOCIAL FORUM
>16-21 January, Mumbai India
>
>Tens of thousands in Mumbai for World Social Forum
>
>The Fourth World Social Forum begins this Friday in the Indian city of Mumbai. Organisers are expecting thousands of international delegates, and tens of thousands of Indian participants. (See AFP report below.)
>
>This is the first time the WSF is being held in Asia.
>
>At a time of global insecurity and conflict, the World Social Forum brings together activists from every corner of the world who are working every day for peace, justice, social protection, political freedom, workers rights and ecological sustainability.
>
>The slogan of the WSF is "Another world is possible." This year the debates will focus on practical strategies for making that "other world" a reality.
>
>The burning debates will be on the US occupation of Iraq, the proliferation of US military bases and the nuclear threat in Asia, the future of the WTO, religious and ethnic conflicts, poverty and debt, Palestine and Israel, the right to food, water, land and jobs.
>
>Focus on the Global South will be present at the WSF, including our executive director Walden Bello who recently received the Right Livelihood Award, known as the "Alternative Nobel".
>
>We are available to provide information and interviews to the press in English, French, Spanish, Tagalog, Visayan, Thai, Hindi, Marathi and Tamil.
>
>We are also in contact with hundreds of other well-informed activists and intellectuals from across Asia and internationally and we are very happy to put you in contact with them.
>
>
>CONTACT IN MUMBAI:
>
>Nicola Bullard
>(+91) 98 92 93 04 08 (from 14 January)
>
>Hotel Parle International
>B.N. Agarwal Commercial Complex
>Vile Parle (East) Mumbai - 400 057 India
>+91 22 26102122
>+91 22 26162476
>
>Email:
>n.bullard at focusweb.org
>
>For more information about the WSF see www.wsfindia.org
>
>
>--------------------------------------------------------
>
>BOMBAY, 4 January (AFP): Nobel laureates Shirin Ebadi and Joseph Stiglitz will join tens of thousands of activists next week in Bombay for six days of brainstorming on the direction of the anti- globalisation movement, organisers said.
>
>The January 16-21 World Social Forum (WSF) will feature hundreds of strategy sessions on how to fight everything from the world economic system to the US occupation of Iraq to the centuries-old caste system.
>
>Some 75,000 people and 2,400 non-governmental groups have registered to attend, WSF organiser Gautam Mody said.
>
>The anti-globalisation extravaganza was held in 2001, 2002 and 2003 in the Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, but the activists hoped to move the movement into Asia with its gaping inequality and more than half the world population.
>
>More than half of the registered WSF participants are from Asia, particularly India, Mody said. The movement has been long dominated by Europeans and Latin Americans.
>
>Among the prominent personalities due at the WSF will be Shirin Ebadi, the Iranian human rights lawyer who won the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize, and Joseph Stiglitz, the Nobel-winning former chief economist of the World Bank turned outspoken critic of international financial institutions.
>
>Also set to attend is Jose Bove, the French sheep farmer and radical unionist who has become one of the most visible faces of the anti-globalisation movement.
>
>Political figures at the WSF will include Yossi Beilin and Yasser Abed Rabbo, former Israeli and Palestinian ministers who together drafted the unofficial Middle East peace plan known as Geneva Initiative
>
>Mody, however, said there was no confirmation yet from former South African president Nelson Mandela, who organisers earlier hoped would close the WSF with a mass gathering on a Bombay beach.
>
>In Bombay, anti-globalisation activists will find a city of 18 million that is home to glittering office blocks and some of Asia's biggest slums.
>
>The metropolis' top powerbrokers include glitzy Bollywood movie stars in tune with the latest global fads and Hindu fundamentalists who each Valentine's Day smash up shops that sell greeting cards for the "Christian holiday."
>
>The anti-globalisation movement got a shot in the arm in September when World Trade Organisation negotiations in the Mexican resort of Cancun deadlocked in acrimony between developing and developed countries.
>
>Mody said the fate of the Cancun talks showed it was "just an often repeated falsehoold that there is consensus on globalisation."
>
>The last WSF in Brazil turned into a rallying ground against the impending war in Iraq, with activists holding massive street protests against US plans for invasion.
>
>An anti-US tone is likely again to colour the WSF where discussions are scheduled on US policy in Iraq and elsewhere in the world, including a debate entitled "Debt, free trade and militarisation: the imperialist strategy in the Americas and the resistance."
>
>On the sidelines of the WSF will be a smaller but more militant forum, Resistance 2004, due to be attended by far-left groups from around Asia and Europe.
>
>The organising statement of the Resistance 2004 said its seminars and street rallies would have a "clear and ambiguous anti- imperialist focus ... unlike the amorphous 'another world is possible' of the WSF."
>
>India has since independence seen itself as an activist among developing nations and had taken a prominent role at the Cancun trade talks.
>
>But India is also seeing an increasing presence of multinational firms as it liberalises an economy that was strictly protectionist until a decade ago.
>
>Among prominent people scheduled to attend are:
>
>-- Iranian human rights lawyer Shirin Ebadi, recipient of the 2003 Nobel Peace Prize
>
>-- Former Israeli justice minister Yossi Beilin and former Palestinian information minister Yasser Abed Rabbo, authors of the unofficial Middle East peace plan known as the Geneva Initiative
>
>-- Columbia University professor Joseph Stiglitz, recipient of the 2001 Nobel Prize in Economics, a former chief economist and senior vice president of the World Bank who has been an outspoken critic of world financial institutions
>
>-- Jose Bove, the French sheep farmer and radical unionist who shot to prominence after helping destroy a partially built McDonald's in 1999 in a protest against US trade sanctions
>
>-- Ahmed Ben Bella, the first president of Algeria after independence from France
>
>-- Arundhati Roy, Indian novelist who won the 1997 Booker Prize for "The God of Small Things," and an activist critical of US foreign policy
>
>-- Former Indian president K.R. Narayanan
>
>-- Pakistani human rights activist Asma Jehangir
>
>-- Finnish Green activist Satu Hassi
>
>- AFP
>
>
>
>
>
>
>====== End Forwarded Message ======
>_______________________________________________
>Seattle-editorial mailing list
>Seattle-editorial at lists.indymedia.org
>http://lists.indymedia.org/mailman/listinfo/seattle-editorial
>
____________________________________________________________
Get advanced SPAM filtering on Webmail or POP Mail ... Get Lycos Mail!
http://login.mail.lycos.com/r/referral?aid=27005
More information about the Seattle-editorial
mailing list