The leaders of five South American countries, Fernando Lugo of Paraguay, Evo Morales of Bolivia, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva of Brazil, Rafael Correa of Ecuador and Hugo Chavez of Venezuela attended the meeting in Porto Alegre, Brazil with 100,000 activists and indigenous people.
As the self appointed global elites met in Davos, South American leadership chose to participate at the World Social Forum
The Brazilian president, Luiz Inacio Lula da Silva, a moderate leftist, has previously attended Davos but this year shunned it for Belem and brought with him a dozen cabinet ministers.
His government would invest in industry to create jobs rather than throw public money at banks as Europe and the US had done, he said. "I believe the crisis is much more severe. We don't know how deep it will go."
Latin America still winces at the painful humiliation of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund ordering austerity measures in the 1980s and 90s. "Now, I expect the IMF to go to [the US president, Barack] Obama and tell him how to fix the economy," said Lula.
As the global economy melts down, the people in the world who have known this was going to happen see opportunity to promote another way of conducting economics, politics and life.
Indigenous people are organizing and thousands from around the world are joining in the process of changing the capitalist business model that has been at the root of so much hunger, war, suffering, environmental degredation and threat to the planet itself.
The crisis shows the deadlock in this capitalist model of development, a purely profit-driven system that benefits only a few," said Tran, vice president of the Vietnam Peace and Development Foundation. "It is time to search for alternative ways of development that put human beings at the center."
We need to change.
Why do we support this? Why do we think that this is the way the world should be?
Open Secrets lists the amount of money Bernard Madoff has sprinkled over politicians over the years. The one name that raised a flag for me was the cousin of Bush 41, George Herbert Walker III.
Bernard Madoff was a one time chairman of
NASDAQ.
Hugo Chavez closed the World Social Forum in front of an audience of 15,000.
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"The great people of the United States are our brothers, my salute to them," Chavez told the 15.000 World Social Forum participants that managed to get inside the Gigantinho Stadium in Porto Alegre to hear him speak.
Credit: Agencia Bolivariana de Noticias
Another world is possible. It is time to set aside childish bickering and fights and join in the dance. The world is changing. War is not working. It is the worst spent dollar in our economy. The stupid fears ginned up by the right wing and others who profit from war, have to be set aside.
I want a thoughtful discussion here. I want a civil discussion. That is what the indigenous people of Latin America and the planet are engaging in and we should not deprive ourselves of civil discussion as well.
Peace.