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February
15, 2002
Phillip
Cryan
Underwriting
the
Colombian War
Mokhiber/Weissman
Resisting
the Assassins
February
14, 2002
Levy and
Easton
Ante
Pavelic
Real Butcher of the Balkans
Joan Claybrook
Dear
Jeb Bush,
About You and Enron
John Chuckman
Time
for a Woman Prez
Alexander
Cockburn
Banning
the Koran
February
13, 2002
Sen. Russ
Feingold
War
Powers and
the War on Terror
Tom Turnipseed
Bush's
Folly
George
Monbiot
American
Imperialism
February
12, 2002
Uri Avnery
The
Great Game:
Oil, Sharon and Iran
Tommy
Ates
Black
Land Loss
February
11, 2002
Walt Brasch
The
Synergizing of America
John Troyer
Enron's
Deep Throat?
February
9, 2002
John Blair
Criticize
Cheney, Go to Jail
February
8, 2002
CounterPunch
Wire
Ashcroft
the Bigot
Molly
Secours
Racism
and Real Estate
Wole Akande
World
Economic Forum:
The Aftermath
Cockburn/St.
Clair
Dita
Sari Tells Reebok
to "Shove It"
February
7, 2002
Patrick
Cockburn
Taliban's
War on Chess
John Chuckman
Howdee,
Dick!
Tariq
Ali
Mullahs
and Heretics
February
6, 2002
Amira
Hass
On
the Edge of the
Non-Violent Demonstrations
Vivian
Berger
Sentenced
to Rape
Vladimir Georgiyev
Russian Intelligence:
War on Iraq Begins in Sept.
Tom Turnipseed
"Axis
of Evil" a Cover for Corporate Corruption?
David
Vest
The
Enron Creature
February
5, 2002
Norman
Madarasz
Dispatch
from Pôrto Alegre
Tom Malinowski
What
to do with
Our "Detainees"?
Dita Sari
Why
I Rejected the
Reebok Human Rights Award
A Photographic Journal of Life
in an Afghan Refugee Camp
By Judith Mann
Resources:
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About 9/11
CounterPunch:
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Five
Days That
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Seattle and Beyond
By Alexander
Cockburn
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Photos by Allan Sekula
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War Diary
CIA's Assassination Plan a History of
Torture in US Prisons
bin Laden and Bush
Business Connections
Aisha Ikramuddin on the Hidden Hype
of US Food Bombs
Peter Linebaugh on
Pakistan
Christopher Hitchens' Love for Mrs. Thatcher
Jiang Zemin Tells Bush:
Nuke 'Em
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CounterPunch
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and Osama bin Laden
Whiteout:
CIA, Drugs & the
Press
by Alexander
Cockburn
and Jeffrey St. Clair
The New Crusade:
America's War on Terrorism
By Rahul Mahajan
The Memphis Blues Again:
Six Decades of Memphis Music Photographs
Photos by Ernest Withers
Text by Daniel Wolff
The New Intifada:
Resisting Israel's Apartheid
Edited by Roane Carey
A Pocket Guide to
Environmental Bad Guys
by James Ridgeway
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The
Phoenix Program
by Douglas Valentine
Al Gore:
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February 15,
2002
From New York to
Porto Alegre
Choose Life
By C.G. Estabrook
The second month of the second year of the new
century began with the two ways open to us set, as it were, side
by side. In New York the WORLD
ECONOMIC FORUM met privately and secretly, an elite collection
of big business leaders, government officials, and their intellectual
bodyguards -- surrounded by a real bodyguard of thousands of
police.
Meanwhile, in Porto Alegre, Brazil, thousands
of representatives of popular organizations from more than 110
countries convened publicly in the second annual WORLD
SOCIAL FORUM. In New York, the Bill of Rights was suspended
in the ways that have become typical for US and other police
forces at these businessmen's meetings; in Brazil, something
of the spirit of carnival pervaded the sessions.
The WORLD ECONOMIC FORUM brought together
those whom the financial press have called -- half in jest, all
in earnest -- "the Masters of the Universe." There
were roughly four cops for every participant, and attempts to
demonstrate against them were harshly controlled. In contrast,
the WORLD SOCIAL FORUM opened with a colorful parade under the
banner "Another World Is Possible"; thousands of people
marched through the center of Porto Alegre, a Brazilian city
that has had a labor-based social democratic government for a
dozen years, to open a discussion of practical alternatives to
the "neoliberal" privatization being cried up in New
York.
There were a thousand "masters"
in New York and perhaps 70,000 attendees in Porto Alegre, but
the disproportion between the world economic elite and the rest
of us is much greater. Those who control the disposition of
the world's wealth -- and hence the possibilities for the rest
of us to employ the talents of our heads and hands -- are a tiny
group: try as they might (and as the media demonstrate, they
do try hard -- there was little coverage of the Brazilian meeting
in the US press), they cannot keep up the fiction that their
interests coincide with those of the rest of us.
More than a hundred and fifty years ago,
a now largely forgotten German student of the Greek and Latin
classics described the "globalization" that had already
come upon the world: "The masters of the universe [not his
phrase, but a reasonable translation of it] have, through their
exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character
to production and consumption in every country. To the great
chagrin of reactionaries, they have drawn from under the feet
of industry the national ground on which it had stood ... They
compel all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt their mode
of production; they compel them to introduce what they call 'liberalization'
into their midst, i.e., to become like themselves. In one word,
the masters of the universe create a world after their own image."
And that world is one of sharp and increasing
inequality. Noam Chomsky, one of the principal speakers at the
WORLD SOCIAL FORUM, points to US government studies (from the
Clinton years) showing that neoliberal economic integration will
continue and enlarge the gap between "haves" and "have-nots."
The Pentagon stated their simple conclusion: that will produce
"turmoil among growing numbers of impoverished people throughout
the world, who will have to be controlled by force." As
Chomsky comments, "Apart from the horrendous consequences
for the victims, that is also a prescription for global disaster."
The German student of a century and a
half ago was of course Karl Marx, and he concluded his description
of actually-existing globalization with a call for more, but
of a different sort: "The working people of the world have
nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win.
Workers of all countries, unite!"
The question is not whether there will
be globalization -- as Marx noted, it has been around for centuries
-- but what form it will take. Will world-wide economic integration
be under the control of those who met in New York and the people
they work for -- and therefore continue the subjection of the
world's majority to the authoritarian institutions in which we
carry on our working lives -- or will it take the forms pioneered
in thought and action by the popular organizations meeting in
Porto Alegre?
The former are adamant that, in Margaret
Thatcher's favorite phrase, "There is no alternative"
-- because they own all the important productive property, so
decisions about how the world's wealth is to be invested are
in their hands. The latter insist that another world -- a human
and humane world -- is possible. These are "sharply different
programs of globalization," Chomsky concludes. "Apart
from whatever else one might think about it, the [New York] version
really does threaten the survival of the species. One reason
is that the underlying principles, if taken seriously, lead to
the conclusion that it is quite rational to destroy the environment
for our grandchildren...."
The Hebrew bible -- the basis for all
modern Christianity, Judaism, and Islam -- includes the following
exhortation: "I call heaven and earth to witness against
you today that I have set before you life and death, blessings
and curses. Choose life so that you and your descendants may
live."
Life was on display in Brazil last week;
in New York, death.
Carl Estabrook
teaches at the University of Illinois and is the host of News
From Neptune, a weekly radio show on politics and the media.
He writes a regular column for CounterPunch.
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