Standing up to injustices of globalization

Kalinga Seneviratne Lecturer, Media Studies Ngee Ann Polytechnic The Straits Times Asia News Network Singapore

In the city of Porto Alegre, Brazil, about 50,000 people from 119 countries representing non-governmental and non-business voices, such as trade unions, religious organizations, aid agencies and international bodies like the International Labour Organization (ILO), met at the World Social Forum (WSF) from Jan. 30 to Feb. 5.

This was the biggest mobilization of anti-globalization forces since the Sept. 11 attacks in the United States; but, for global news networks, the WSF was a non-event.

The WSF was launched last year, with 20,000 participants, in Porto Alegre as a counterbalance to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, which received much prime-time coverage.

At a time when the media is concerned with the terrorist threat to world peace, it is important to ask whether a bigger threat to world peace comes from such news values, which ignore the voices of so-called "civil society" groups from around the world.

These voices speak out against injustice, and it is a sense of injustice felt by many people around the world that fuels terrorism.

Last year, when the WSF was launched, 20,000 participated in its deliberations. This year, the figure far exceeded the organizers' expectations. There were over 50,000 participants from 119 countries, including 2,800 journalists.

Most participants at the meeting disagreed with the term "anti-globalization", which is usually used by mainstream media organizations to describe such gatherings.

"A sane and just form of globalization is what anti- globalization is all about," argued Prof. Noam Chomsky from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

He told participants that globalization, as it is understood today, is designed purely to suit a wealthy minority, those "masters of the universe" who were meeting at the WEF in New York.

Thus, it is only popular movements like the WSF which can return power and resources to the ordinary people and build a truly just and democratic world.

Being the first meeting of its kind since the Sept. 11 attacks, many participants at the WSF argued that it was time to transform such a gathering into a new type of global organization, one able to "fight evil and represent the poor".

"We are here in Porto Alegre because we realize that we cannot solve our problems alone, within our national frontiers, despite our hard-won political freedom," said Willie Madisha of the Confederation of South African Trade Unions.

"We have to recognize that, as individual countries, we are being picked off one by one by the elites and their representative institutions."

Trade unions at the WSF believed the labour movement needs to be at the forefront of this new international movement against injustice and unbalanced globalization.

Guy Ryder, general secretary of the International Confederation of Trade Unions, argued that the labour movement must fight to make the voices of the workers heard in the globalised marketplace.

Madisha pointed out that since the South African government embarked on its neo-liberal growth, employment and redistribution strategy in 1996, unemployment has risen. Worse, the value of its currency, the rand, has dropped dramatically against the U.S. dollar.

Rather than create financial stability for investments, the country's biggest capitalists are trying to take the money out of the country.

"Left to themselves, the elites will, sooner or later, plunge us all into social and ecological disaster as they pursue their own narrow, short-term interests," he predicted.

ILO director-general Juan Somavia said in an interview with the Terra Viva newspaper that the WSF reflected the concerns of many about the feeling of insecurity generated by the present model of globalization.

"It is of utmost importance to build bridges of understanding among people with different visions of the world and of globalization, in order to transform it into a system that benefits all," he said.

In reference to this, an idea that was debated widely was the Tobin Tax. This was named after the Nobel prize-winning economist James Tobin who, in 1972, proposed that a worldwide tariff of less than half of 1 percent be levied on all major countries' foreign-exchange transactions, in order to stop speculative capital flows.

Over US$1.5 trillion (S$2.7 trillion) is traded daily, and it is estimated that 95 percent is speculative capital flows, which have been blamed for the 1997 Asian financial crisis and the economic collapse in Argentina.

Many participants argued that such an international taxation system would prevent this type of crisis from happening again, but cautioned that it would need to have a strong control mechanism.

If implemented properly, the Tobin Tax is expected to reduce or eliminate the incentive to speculate and help stabilize exchange rates by reducing the volume of speculation. It would also be set low deliberately so as not to have an adverse effect on trade or long-term investments.

Under whose auspices this would be set up still needs to be agreed but, for years, the big powers, particularly the U.S., have been opposed to it.

French economist Dominique Plihon, who led the charge at Porto Alegre for the implementation of the Tobin Tax, says that in the last few years, the proposal has made strong inroads into French and European political debate.

Dr Jayati Ghosh of the Indian Development Economist also observed that the real challenge was explaining the Tobin Tax to workers and ordinary people, and to point out the benefits of regulating financial flows.

This will, indeed, be a tall order if the major international media networks continue to ignore such meetings.