New York and Porto Alegre: the two simultaneous world forums re-ignited the debate in the main international dailies on the relation between economy and globalization. La Croix of 4/2 dedicated a whole page to the two “summits”: “The struggle against poverty in the southern hemisphere says a résumé of the article signed by Pierre Cochez is at the centre of the two world forums in Brazil and in the United States. At Porto Alegre, the World Social Forum is taking into consideration the question of debt. In New York, the Global Economic Forum prefers to examine the question of how to root out terrorism”. “The Forum of Porto Alegre ended with a blanket condemnation of the USA”, headlines Le Monde of 6/2. “Almost all the issues tackled in the conference speeches and in the debates – write Babette Stern and Jean-Jacques Sévilla in the article culminated in a condemnation of the policy of the Bush administration and of the American multinationals (…). Held responsible for the Argentine financial collapse, the International Monetary Fund catalyzed the attacks against the operation of the world financial system, which favours every form of speculative venture”. Similarly the Spanish papers dedicate ample coverage to the two forums in New York and Porto Alegre. El Pais of 31/1 carries the headline: “ Civil liberties in the agenda of globalization” and calls the two forums respectively “ elitist and popular“,” “ thesis and antithesis“, “ north and south”. It argues that “ globalization undoubtedly generates considerable profits for one part of the planet, but marginalizes another more numerous fragment of it that does not share the advantages of improved communication and interdependence.” An editorial in the same paper of 4/1 is of view that “ ‘antiglobalization, in some sense, has won. Their [the antiglobalists’] concerns were fully taken on board in the debates of the World Economic Forum: the need to reduce the inequalities in societies and between societies; the fight against Aids; the quest for a global government; a programme of cooperation with Africa. Porto Alegre and Davos have more things in common today that they had last year.” Writing in La Razón of 2/2, Luis María Ansón argues that “ globalization is inescapable… and instead of confining it we need to guide it with the aim of preventing the injustices from being concentrated and agitating the world once again.” The same columnist observes that the papal magisterium of the twentieth century had already “ established the foundations for an equitable distribution of the world’s wealth.” With regard to the protests of the “no-global” militants, Luis Ignacio Prada writing in ABC of 1/2, points out that “in spite of the fact that some of the methods they use for their protests are deplorable, their just requests for a fair distribution of wealth should not be underestimated“. The German press devoted its attention to the two world meetings with sobriety and without indulging in long-winded dissertations. The weekly Spiegel of 4/2 compared the two summits laconically in its business section in a report signed by Jan Fleischhauer and Ulrich Schäfer. “ Even at first glance one can intuit that it’s a struggle to win the world’s attention. On the one hand, the powerful, on the other the powerless. Here the global competitors, there the global critics. On the one hand money, on the other protest“. The Süddeutsche Zeitung of 5/2 also deals with the two events, emphasizing the wide participation at Porto Alegre of “ representatives of governments, of the United Nations, of trades unions and of the Churches“. But the real “ political epicentre” of the Forum was, in the view of the Bavarian daily, “ the criticism of the new free trade zone projected by the USA for the American continent”. The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung of 6/2 dedicates to this event a comment signed by Josef Oerhrlein, entitled “The meeting of the communities of the world’s left” in which it is suggested that “the number of the participants itself shows the need at the world level for a social shock-absorber for whatever kind of political and economic ‘model'” and also that “the Forum, by its very size, far larger than even its promoters has expected, has evolved into a movement that cannot simply be relegated to the left”.
