Global IssuesBELEM VS DAVOS: ECONOMIC ESTABLISHMENT STEALS LIMELIGHT DESPITE CULPABILITY
The media gave ample coverage to the World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, attended since its beginning in 1971 by the same politicians and businessmen who have sustained for decades that financial capitalism was progressing towards a certain and every more generous prosperity and who now promise that they will revive it without offering any plausible explanation for the current catastrophic recession, writes Mario Lubetkin, Director General of IPS news agency.
In this article, Lubetkin writes that the same media barely covered the parallel, rival World Social Forum held in Belem, Brazil, whose participants have argued since the first meeting in 2001 that the neoliberal financial capitalist system was heading for disaster. It seems they were right.
Although many argue that the WEF participants should have been given less media attention because of the fact that they are responsible for the financial cataclysm ("I'm not going to go listen to a litany of self-criticism," Lula said, regarding his absence at Davos.) there is another factor to consider: the expectation of hearing how the pilots who caused the shipwreck plan to save the vessel, and how the deregulators now plan to regulate the derailed financial system.
(*) Mario Lubetkin is Director General of IPS news agency.
//NOT FOR PUBLICATION IN CANADA, NEW ZEALAND, CZECH REPUBLIC, IRELAND, POLAND, THE UNITED STATES, AND THE UNITED KINGDOM//
© Inter Press Service (2009) — All Rights ReservedOriginal source: Inter Press Service